Thursday, August 18, 2011

Duncan: States Don't Need to Join Common Core for Waiver - Politics K-12 - Education Week

Duncan: States Don't Need to Join Common Core for Waiver

By Alyson Klein on August 18, 2011 5:05 PM | No comments |

If you were worried that the administration's plan to offer No Child Left Behind waivers to states that adopt college-and-career ready standards would somehow doom the Common Core State Initiative, you can rest easy.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said today in no uncertain terms that states absolutely do not have to participate in Common Core in order to qualify for one of the department's yet-to-be-determined NCLB waivers.

"I like common [standards], but what is most important to me is high standards," Duncan said during a taping of C-SPAN's Newsmakers program. If states that

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Shame of a nation

Shame of a nation

Millions of children growing up in poverty

A couple of new reports caught my eye yesterday. The first was a new study on child well-being put out by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. It found that child poverty is on the rise in the U.S. with as many as 1 in 5 children living in poverty. Of course, that figure represents a nationwide

How Can We "Motivate" The Unmotivated To Learn? - Classroom Q&A With Larry Ferlazzo - Education Week Teacher

How Can We "Motivate" The Unmotivated To Learn?

By Larry Ferlazzo on August 18, 2011 2:21 PM | No Comments |

This week's question comes from Cyndy Woods-Wilson, who asks:

How can we "motivate" the unmotivated to learn something new?
\
This is a question that I'm sure has crossed many educators' minds. Please leave your responses to Cyndy's question in the comments section of this post. I'll share a few of them next Wednesday, where I'll also publish my response and ideas from invited guests.

Anyone whose question is selected for this weekly column can choose one free

Democurmudgeon: Indiana Teachers Stop Law that would have changed their hours and days without adjusting pay. I’m not making this up.

Indiana Teachers Stop Law that would have changed their hours and days without adjusting pay. I’m not making this up.

by Democurmudgeon

Want to know what happens when you get rid of collective bargaining and take workers rights away?

We get amazing "new" third world stories like this:

Edweek: A judge on Wednesday blocked the Indiana Department of Education from using new teacher contract forms that would have allowed school districts to change the hours or days that teachers work without adjusting their pay. Marion County Superior Court Judge Patrick McCarty (said) "Contrary to IDOE's argument, nothing in Indiana law or the newly enacted statutes gives Dr. Bennett or IDOE the authority to contravene general contract principles and laws that have been established and govern in Indiana."

McCarty said the contract form drafted by

Dream Act students won't be deportation targets, officials say - latimes.com

Dream Act students won't be deportation targets, officials say

Demonstrator Ruben Bernal, who recently graduated from San Jose State University, rallies for the Dream Act in downtown San Jose on June 29.

The Obama administration announced Thursday that undocumented students and other low-priority immigration offenders will not be targeted for deportation under enforcement programs.

The announcement marks further steps to stop the deportation of people it considers "low-priority" immigrants like so-called Dream Act eligible students and those with long-standing family ties in the country. These eligible students are those who were illegally brought to the U.S. as children by their

Schools Matter: Chomsky on Education Privatization

Chomsky on Education Privatization

by Jim Horn

A clip from an article posted at AlterNet:

A couple of months ago, I went to Mexico to give talks at the National University in Mexico, UNAM. It's quite an impressive university — hundreds of thousands of students, high-quality and engaged students, excellent faculty. It's free. And the city — Mexico City — actually, the government ten years ago did try to add a little tuition, but there was a national student strike, and the government backed off. And, in fact, there's still an administrative building on campus that is still occupied by students and used as a center for activism throughout the city. There's also, in the city itself, another university, which is not only free but has open admissions. It has compensatory options for those who need them. I was there, too; it's also quite an impressive level, students, faculty, and so on. That's Mexico, a poor country.

Right after that I happened to go to California, maybe the richest place in the world. I was giving

LAUSD Is Not The ONLY PLAYER IN Public School Privatization & The War Against California Teachers - Fired CTC Staff Attorney Kathleen Carroll Speaks Out - Perdaily.com

LAUSD Is Not The ONLY PLAYER IN Public School Privatization & The War Against California Teachers - Fired CTC Staff Attorney Kathleen Carroll Speaks Out

by Leonard Isenberg

Pop some corn and have some friends over to the house to watch the following films noirs about the move to privatize public education and the blatant corruption that is being used to unjustly attack teacher in accomplishing it throughout this country.

Special thanks to Steve Zeltzer and the Labor Video Project

Homeland Security, Sham Universities Preying on Foreign Students - Hispanically Speaking News

Homeland Security Now Targeting Sham Universities Rather Than Foreign Students

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been cracking down on the number of so-called “sham universities”, which have been using their status as schools accepting international students as a way to charge immigrant students of them thousands of dollars each in return for students

Schools like Tri-Valley University in California are suspected of preying on those willing to pay for a better life, trusting that school officials promising to provide them with student visas will do just that. However, these visas are usually illegally obtained, and by the time the students realize this their stuck, many afraid to go to law enforcement for fear of being punished for being in the country illegally.

Tri-Valley was shut down by federal authorities after an initial investigation led investigators to believe it was using foreign students to make millions of dollars, while falsifying documentation to provide them with

NYC Educator: PEP Rides Again

PEP Rides Again

by NYC Educator

I continually wonder what the purpose is of the PEP. They simply pass everything. Verizon is bullying its employees into all sorts of givebacks, despite great profits, and PEP approves a huge contract with them anyway. Massive demonstrations to the contrary, PEP simply does whatever Mayor Bloomberg wishes. Then they went and approved a bunch of contracts foroutside agencies to run schools.

“These contracts will be approved, but they will not be reviewed before hand,” said Paola de Kock, a member of the Citywide Council on High Schools, who spoke in between Communication Workers of America strikers. ”What you will be approving tonight is unethical for our children.”

Is that what "reform" is all about? Seems to me, yes. Let's improvise. Let's try this. Let's try that. If it doesn't

NCLB and waivers, what is going on? | Philadelphia Public School Notebook

NCLB and waivers, what is going on?

by Dale Mezzacappa

Last week, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced that states could apply for waivers from No Child Left Behind. What does this mean?

The law, which has yet to be reauthorized in Congress even though it expired in 2007, has long been controversial – especially its goal that all students would be proficient in math and reading by 2014. Schools that consistently failed to meet ever-escalating targets have been required to undertake drastic reform measures, including what we are now calling turnaround.

As the goals get higher, more and more schools are failing to meet them, even if large numbers of their students are reaching the proficiency levels.

Free Schools Revisited: Revolution vs. Transformation « Cooperative Catalyst

Free Schools Revisited: Revolution vs. Transformation

by daretheschool

“The public school exists to turn out manageable workers, obedient consumers, manipulable voters, and if need be willing killers” -Jonathan Kozol author of Free Schools

The most notable and recent movement for alternative education occurred in 1960’s to the early 1970’s, and was known as the “free school” movement. The free school movement was an effort to build small alternative schools where students participated equally in governance as well as enjoyed complete control over curriculum. Free

NYC Public School Parents: Last night's PEP meeting on Verizon contract and its "Norma Rae" moment

Last night's PEP meeting on Verizon contract and its "Norma Rae" moment

by Leonie Haimson

Last night's meeting of the Panel for Educational Policy meeting was exhilarating, stirring, and depressing all at once. Over a thousand parents, teachers, and striking Verizon workers showed up for the pre-meeting rally, and hundreds more filled the auditorium afterwards at Murry Bergtraum HS, chanting, booing Walcott and the DOE, and speaking up passionately for the need for more caring education priorities, and against the $120 million Verizon contract, which will steal even more resources from our children and the company's workers.

This contract had at least five strikes against it, each of which would have convinced any individual with a conscience to oppose it, but was nevertheless rubber-stamped by the eight mayoral appointees (known collectively as the Panel of Eight Puppets) plus the Staten Island rep, with the four other borough reps all voting

All Education Matters: Open Letter to Bill Gates: Help us Solve the Student Lending Crisis

Quick Post to the Google Viewers Dear Viewers at Google in Cali and NYC: Thanks so much for visiting my blog. It is nice to see you here! I received a prompt about using adsense last night, and I suspect that is why you've been viewing my work - you see that my blog is very, very ...

Open Letter to Bill Gates: Help us Solve the Student Lending Crisis Dear Mr. Gates: You obviously care a great deal about education. I applaud you for that. As you know, Mr. Buffett has recently urged Congress to stop coddling the rich. Salon.com has a new challenge, 'The Patriotic Billionaire Challenge' too. We're ...

Here's something to celebrate! For-profit enrollment plunges! Yippee! The for-profits have seen a sharp decline in enrollment, according to a recent piece in the Chronicle. Here's a great quote: New-student enrollment declined an average of 14.1 percent this quarter at 10 of the biggest for-profit educators, ...

Tests, cheating, and educational corruption

by admin

Education think-tank Fair Test’s excellent fact sheet on cheating and the harmful consequences of high stakes testing to students, parents, and teachers.
“Erasing errors and filling in correct test answers is just one of many ways to “cheat” on standardized tests. The scandals in Atlanta, Baltimore, Washington DC, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and many other jurisdictions are the tip of an iceberg. Across the nation, strategies that boost scores without improving learning, including narrow teaching to the test and pushing out low-scoring students, are spreading rapidly. Widespread corruption that undermines educational quality is an inevitable consequence of the overuse and misuse of high-stakes testing, just as Donald Campbell predicted. …

NCLB and related state and local high-stakes testing policies put intense pressure on teachers, principals and other educators. The Georgia investigation into the Atlanta cheating found, “The targets set by the district were often unreasonable, especially given their cumulative effect over the years. Additionally, the administration put

Tests, cheating, and educational corruption

by admin

Save Seattle Schools Community Blog: Game on, Times

Game on, Times

by Melissa Westbrook

The Times' editorial board is nothing if not amusing. Their current editorial on the School Board races puts forth the results without much analysis (because, of course, if they said, out loud, that the incumbents all appear to be in trouble that would hurt their cause). Here's how they framed the results:

Frustration about Seattle School Board leadership weighed heavily on the minds of primary voters who, in all but one board race, were more generous with their votes for challengers than incumbents.

Yes, generous is one way to put it. Another would be that all the incumbents appear to be in trouble.

They can only say about the challengers that they raise valid concerns about the

President’s Job Ideas Could Include Public Works Funding of School Maintenance | FDL News Desk

President’s Job Ideas Could Include Public Works Funding of School Maintenance

by David Dayen

The LA Times gets some more intelligence on what this September jobs package is going to be all about. And it includes one idea that, I think it’s fair to say, is finally a public works program:

The jobs package that President Obama plans to unveil shortly after Labor Day could include tens of billions of dollars to renovate thousands of dilapidated public schools and a tax break to encourage businesses to hire new workers, according to people familiar with White House deliberations [...]
“I like the optics of it,” said Jared Bernstein, a former administration economics advisor and a proponent of the school rehab program. “It’s the public school in your community, not a bunch of

Join Today: The Educator's PLN - The personal learning network for educators

The Educator's PLN - The personal learning network for educators

What You Need To Know About Navigating This Ning Site and a List of Other Educator Ning Sites

A Screencast and tutorial on Navigating this site is available here and on the Video Page
http://edupln.ning.com/video/a-screencast-on-how-to-1

Please feel free to make suggestions for improvement of this site.

Profile Picture
To add a picture to your profile simply use any picture you have filed. If you need one, take a cellphone shot of yourself and email it to your own email account. Download the Pic file and then upload it to your ning profile picture.

Page Navigation

Main Page - A capsule view of all of the recent actions on the entire site. Members can view what has recently been added to the site by this quick reference area. A click to the hot button in the description will take you directly to that activity.

Invite Page - Use this page to invite other Educators to this site.

My Page- This is a capsule view of all of the recent activities that involved you in any way.

Videos Page - This page contains many Educational videos. You may add videos to the list or you may download them for personal use.
Members may add videos following the simple directions. Limit your selection of videos to those that pertain to building or developing a Personal Learning Network. Videos of a commercial nature may be deleted.

Groups Page -This page contains groups of members with common interests in specific areas. Members may join any group or start one that meets his or her needs.

Forum Page - This is a page containing Discussions. Members may add to any discussion or begin one.

Ning Chat Page - This is a live Chat page for members. A list of members on the site appears on the page.

Twitter Edchat Page - This page contains a feed from #Edchat on Twitter. Members may view only from this page. Interaction requires a twitter account.

Events Page - Members may add any event that would be of interest to Educators. The instructions to add an event are simple with easy to follow prompts.

Will teachers work hard for Democrats in 2012? « Fred Klonsky's blog

Will teachers work hard for Democrats in 2012?

by Fred Klonsky

Anthony Cody writes an insightful piece for Valerie Strauss’ column in today’s Washington Post.

In spite of the NEA early no strings endorsement of Obama at last July’s Representative Assembly here in Chicago, can Democrats rely on teachers to do the street level work necessary to beat the Tea Party Republicans in 2012?

Cody focuses on the education policies coming out of the Duncan DOE. And Cody points to tip of the iceberg of discontent that was the SOS March on Washington.

But here’s another question. Will teachers like those in Illinois come out in the numbers that Democrats need

Hechinger Report | Poverty and education reform — and those caught in the middle

Poverty and education reform — and those caught in the middle

by Sarah Garland

Glendalys Delgado and her sons, Carlos, 12, and Juan, 7. (Photo by Sarah Garland)

On an unseasonably warm evening last November, Glendalys Delgado lowered herself into a child-sized chair in the classroom of her youngest son, Juan, a second-grader at Thomas Dudley Elementary School in Camden, New Jersey. Juan’s teacher, Shakira Wyche, sat next to her looking serious.

“You’re going to be a little upset,” Wyche told Delgado as she held up Juan’s report card. A line of Fs trailed down the page. Juan is “very intelligent,” perhaps the smartest in the class, the teacher said, but he refuses to

#AskArne Twitter Town Hall Next Wednesday: Share your Questions Here - Living in Dialogue - Education Week Teacher

#AskArne Twitter Town Hall Next Wednesday: Share your Questions Here

By Anthony Cody on August 18, 2011 10:05 AM | No Comments |

The Department of Education announced Tuesday that Secretary Arne Duncan will participate in an #AskArne Twitter Town Hall on next Wednesday, August 24, at 1:30 p.m. EDT.

Veteran education journalist John Merrow will moderate the town hall that will also be broadcast live on the Department of Education's ustream channel.

Twitter users can submit questions to the Secretary using the hashtag #AskArne.

Many of us will be teaching at that time, but questions can be submitted at any time prior to the event.

A couple of weeks ago, on the eve of the Save Our Schools March, I wrote aboutmy own experience asking Secretary Duncan a question in person.

After pursuing answers from this administration for the past year and a half, I have come to the conclusion that they do not have very good ones. After one of Secretary Duncan's press secretaries accused me of misrepresenting President