Monday, August 15, 2011

Straight Up Conversation: Former New York Commissioner David Steiner :: Frederick M. Hess

Straight Up Conversation: Former New York Commissioner David Steiner

by Frederick M. Hess • Aug 15, 2011 at 12:47 pm
Cross-posted from Education Week

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Back in April, New York's classy commissioner of education David Steiner discreetly announced that he'd be stepping down in July. This was shortly after Cathie Black's tumultuous departure as NYCDOE Chancellor, so David's announcement drew less attention than it probably merited. A lifelong academic, with a philosophy degree from Oxford and a doctorate in political science from Harvard, Steiner may have been the most erudite state chief in recent memory. Before taking the appointment, he'd previously served as the dean of the education school at Hunter College, where he oversaw the creation of the heralded Teacher U training program. (Back in February, Teacher U split off into its own degree-granting institution, Relay School of Education, designed to train current teachers in 10 U.S. cities.) During his two years as commissioner, Steiner helped New York develop tougher standards and guided the state to a successful Race to the Top round two victory.

As he returns to Hunter, I thought it timely to chat with David about a few of his takeaways and lessons learned

Ty “Jaws” Fahner, the pension destroyer. He’s back. « Fred Klonsky's blog

Ty “Jaws” Fahner, the pension destroyer. He’s back

From the Rockford Register Star:

Illinois House leaders say they still are working on legislation that would ease the state’s crushing pension burden, although they are closed-mouthed about what those changes will be and when the General Assembly will be asked to consider them.
“The work has been going on, but I’m not going into details,” said Steve Brown, spokesman for Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago.
Asked if Madigan wants something for lawmakers to consider during the veto

Shanker Blog » Attracting The "Best Candidates" To Teaching

Attracting The “Best Candidates” To Teaching

by Matthew Di Carlo

One of the few issues that all sides in the education debate agree upon is the desirability of attracting “better people” into the teaching profession. While this certainly includes the possibility of using policy to lure career-switchers, most of the focus is on attracting “top” candidates right out of college or graduate school.

The common metric that is used to identify these “top” candidates is their pre-service (especially college) characteristics and performance. Most commonly, people call for the need to attract teachers from the “top third” of graduating classes, an outcome that is frequently cited as being the case in high-performing nations such as Finland. Now, it bears noting that “attracting better people,” like “improving teacher quality,” is a policy goal, not a concrete policy proposal – it tells us what we want, not how to get it. And how to make teaching more enticing for “top” candidates is still very much an open question (as is the equally important question of how to improve

Urban Cities Group Backs Education School Review - Teacher Beat - Education Week

Urban Cities Group Backs Education School Review

By Stephen Sawchuk on August 15, 2011 11:28 AM | No comments |

The Council of the Great City Schools has thrown its weight behind a controversial review of the nation's colleges of education currently being conducted by the National Council on Teacher Quality and U.S. News and World Report.

In a letter sent on Friday, the CGCS, which represents more than 60 urban districts, said it supports the study because it's concerned that too many programs graduate teachers who are not academically prepared to provide instruction in urban school systems. The decision to endorse the review

Learners ≠ consumers « Cooperative Catalyst

Learners ≠ consumers

POSTED BY CHAD SANSING ⋅ AUGUST 15, 2011 ⋅ LEAVE A COMMENT

FILED UNDER CONSUMER, EDUCATIONAL TRANSFORMATION, JOYFUL LEARNING, PRODUCER, TEACHING AND LEARNING

Pillow fight by Indabelle

Since returning from #ISTE11, I’ve struggled with writing about education. Given the tanked economy, our retrograde, juvenile government, and the epidemic breakout of strong-man/yes–man/straw-man educational dictatorships, I’ve felt a bit like Margot from“All Summer in a Day.”

We are living and working in a playground battlefield.

It’s insane.

In response, we need to make our classrooms sane places, where evidence of joy, learning, community, excellence, and authenticity are self-evident. We need to make our classrooms places where the cause-and-effect of what we do logically interrelate inside and outside the room – where learning isn’t a false scarcity and school isn’t a dealer’s

DFER Registers as Lobbying Organization « DFER Watch

DFER REGISTERS AS LOBBYING ORGANIZATION

Posted by ken libby on August 15, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Earlier this month, Education Reform Now retained Blank Rome Government Relations to lobby on their behalf at the federal level.

On August 9th, Democrats for Education Reform also registered as a lobbying organization. Devin Boyle, DFER’s legislative director, and Charles Barone, DFER’s Director of Federal Policy, are

History Lesson: What Some Previous Presidents Thought Of Corporate Power | Addicting Info

History Lesson: What Some Previous Presidents Thought Of Corporate Power

August 14, 2011

By Sarah Wood

President Theodore Roosevelt

It is clear what some of our previous Presidents believed as they began, built, and continued to facilitate the American Dream… that the people of this great nation come first.

“I hope we shall… crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government in a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.” ~ Thomas Jefferson

“There is an evil which ought to be guarded against in the indefinite accumulation of property from the capacity of holding it in perpetuity by corporations. The power of all corporations ought to be

Steven Brill’s blinkered thinking in the Wall Street Journal « Parents Across America

Steven Brill’s blinkered thinking in the Wall Street Journal

Today’s Wall St. Journal features an article by Steven Brill, drawn from his new bookClass Warfare, in which he acknowledges the huge burn out rates of charter school teachers. He describes one “super” teacher and administrator, a 28 year old assistant principal at Harlem Success Academy named Jessica Reid, who quits, despite a large salary and quick advancement, because “This wasn’t a sustainable life, in terms of my health and my marriage.”

Brill then concludes:

“The lesson that I draw from Ms. Reid’s dropping out of the race at the Harlem Success school is that the

Jersey Jazzman: Does Earning Tenure Make a Teacher "Worse"?

Does Earning Tenure Make a Teacher "Worse"?

by Duke

One of the few good things to come out of yesterday's Stronger America special on MSNBC was that it provided a forum so we can catalog all of the blindly accepted assumptions "reformers" make about schools and teachers:

"There are too many bad teachers."

"College teacher preparation programs aren't working."

"We need lots of technology in schools to get kids ready for the 'real world.'"

"Merit pay works, because it's logical." (It's as logical as believing in fairies)

"All children have equal potential to go to college." (This one I love. The same people who claim this will claim in

A Booming Education Idea Goes Bust in California voiceofsandiego.org: Education

voiceofsandiego.org: Education

A Booming Education Idea Goes Bust in CaliforniaComments (2) | 1:00 pm

The trouble came to Noemi Zermeno in an envelope. She spotted it when she was dropping off her three kids at their Linda Vista preschool, tucked into the binder where she signs them in and out.

"I started panicking," she said.

The single mom can see the preschool from her front door. She had just moved to the little beige duplex across Jewett Street, wanting to live closer to the school she and her children adore.

Read the rest of this article

Stop Coddling the Super-Rich - NYTimes.com

Stop Coddling the Super-Rich

By WARREN E. BUFFETT

Published: August 14, 2011

REPRINTS

Omaha

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Kelly Blair

Times Topic: Income Tax

Related in Opinion

Editorial: The Truth About Taxes (August 7, 2011)

OUR leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.

While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they’d been long-term investors.

These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered

Managing From Up Close | The Forum for Education and Democracy

Managing From Up Close

August 15, 2011 - George Wood

I believe the current conventional wisdom about school district leadership is flawed. Many of the current ‘reformers’ are betting on what I would call ‘management from afar’. It goes like this—find an executive from an area other than education, train them in the business of schools, and turn them loose to cut budgets and drive up test scores. Oh, and keep the old model of district leadership with orders coming from ‘downtown’ and the district leadership knowing little, if anything, about the real life of classrooms.

That may work in some places, and fail in others. (If it does work then we need some similar approaches to the leadership of our medical system, Congress, and the home mortgage and banking industries.) But I am willing to bet that the impact will be limited.

My PLN Is My Education BFF! « Diary of a Public School Teacher!

My PLN Is My Education BFF!

by Oldschoolteach

My PLN (Professional Learning Network) is my Education BFF (Best Friend Forever)! That’s how I feel about my PLN! It is not easy to teach in isolation, but I did, for many years. No more! I have surrounded myself with educators from all over the world and I, and my students, have profited educationally, from my actions.

I have learned more in the last year since I discovered, and joined a number of Professional Learning Networks and/or Communities, then I have in my 27 years of teaching. No exaggeration!!

What should a PLN provide? Here are what, I believe, are important aspects of

NYC Educator: Gates Finds His Area of Expertise

Gates Finds His Area of Expertise

by NYC Educator

For years we've read about how Bill Gates has planted his two cents, and billions more, into education. Largely it's pro-corporate nonsense, anything that disrupts unions, and anything that hurts working people. The small schools experiment didn't work, but Bloomberg had embraced it and so it goes on. The preposterous statements he'd make in public---principals cannot observe teachers due to contracts. The assumptions that all that mattered was test scores, or that DVDs of excellent teachers were just as good as giving every kid an excellent teacher.

I could go on, but essentially Gates has filled America with crap ideas, spending millions to push a propaganda film, and generally infecting all of us up to and including the White House. Arne Duncan seems nothing more than an echo chamber for Gates druthers, spreading the crap ideas farther and

Schooling in the Ownership Society: N.Y. Chancellor Tisch spends millions on Race-To-Top 'advisers"

N.Y. Chancellor Tisch spends millions on Race-To-Top 'advisers"

by Mike Klonsky

Chancellor Tisch

Power philanthropy rules the schools

“Private people give money to support things they’re interested in,” -- Roger Tilles, member of the Board of Regents.

Chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents, Merryl Tisch, is contracting 13 research fellows to advise the education commissioner and the 17-member board on how to spend its $700 million Race To The Top grant. The fellows will be paid as much as $189,000 each, in private money; to date, $4.5 million has been raised, including $1 million donated Tisch herself. She is a member of one of New York’s multi-billionaire families.

Donors to the program will include Bill Gates ($892,000), who is leading the charge to evaluate teachers,

All Education Matters: [PART II] Conversations with Candidates: K-12 Teacher Marie Corfield Wants to Shake Things Up in New Jersey

[PART II] Conversations with Candidates: K-12 Teacher Marie Corfield Wants to Shake Things Up in New Jersey

by C. Cryn Johannsen

If you are a candidate running for office (city, state, or at the national level) and would like to be promoted by AEM, please contact me at ccrynjohannsen@gmail.com. All candidates will have the opportunity to review the material I publish about them, so none of your words will be misconstrued. I'm happy to be of assistance in spreading the word about your candidacy, your values, and what you intend to do once elected. Last year, I interviewed Kevin Bradley (who ran as a Democrat for the House of Representatives), Rick Staggenborg,, and Jim Holbert. Last week, I interviewed David Hunsicker who hopes to kick out the rascally, destructive Eric

Application for Charter Schools Way Up, Despite Lukewarm Results - The Bradenton Times

Application for Charter Schools Way Up, Despite Lukewarm Results - The Bradenton Times - Free News for Bradenton, FL and Manatee County

Application for Charter Schools Way Up, Despite Lukewarm Results

Published Monday, August 15, 2011 2:15 am

by Dennis Maley

BRADENTON – Rick Scott made it clear while campaigning that he favored charter schools as an alternative to the traditional public education model. As governor, no one can accuse him of not fulfilling his campaign promises, but skeptics are concerned that the moves to open the state up even more widely to charter school education are backed by too much ideology and not enough results. Scott made major waver last month when he announced that he would award all of the state's $55 million in PECO funds to charter schools, much to the chagrin of budget-ailing public schools.

Scott's message has been well received among the charter school industry. Applications are way up this year as national charter companies zoom in on a state that they recognize as sensitive to their cause. Scott wasn't the first governor to open his arms to the charter concept. Former governor Jeb Bushwas also a big advocate of the charter model and created a welcoming environment that led to Florida being 4th in the nation in the number of active charter schools with 411 statewide,

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