Monday, August 22, 2011

Committee of Seventy: Reveal donor names | Philadelphia Public School Notebook

Committee of Seventy: Reveal donor names

by Erika Owens on Aug 22 2011 Posted in Latest news

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The Committee of Seventy, a local good government watchdog group, is urging the School Reform Commission to reveal the names of the anonymous donors who contributed $405,000 towards Superintendent Arlene Ackerman's $905,000 buyout.

The SRC still needs to approve the buyout of Ackerman's contract. The deal will be presented at this Wednesday's SRC meeting. At a press conference Monday afternoon, Mayor Nutter said he worked to limit the taxpayers' burden for the buyout to $500,000 and "made a couple of calls" to potential donors.

He also said he thinks those who contributed donations are entitled to

A Ruling that Makes Charter Schools Accountable to Taxpayers | Scathing Purple Musings

A Ruling that Makes Charter Schools Accountable to Taxpayers

by Bob Sikes

On the heals of Rick Scott’s ill-advised pep rally last week for 200o charter school educators, comes news that an Ohio court has ruled that the state’s charter schools must abide by state law and make public decisions they make with taxpayer money. From the editors of the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

It took a Franklin County judge to make Ohio law perfectly clear to for-profit charter school operators: Despite years of lax oversight by Ohio education officials, they must follow the law.
Although Ohio’s community schools are privately operated, their finances — which come from taxpayers — cannot be shielded from public scrutiny or oversight.

Unions As Red Herrings | ThinkProgress

Unions As Red Herrings

By Matthew Yglesias on Aug 21, 2011 at 10:30 am

An excellent point from Sara Mosle:

Yet Brill wants us to believe that unions are the primary — even sole — cause of failing public schools. But hard evidence for this is scarce. Many of the nation’s worst-performing schools (according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress) are concentrated in Southern and Western right-to-work states, where public sector unions are weakest and collective bargaining enjoys little or no protection.

I think the dialogue on this tends to get turned upside down. There are a lot of reforms that K-12 education needs in the United States. Since strong teacher’s unions do in fact exist, they often take a prominent role in avoiding these reforms. But that’s a question of union leaders not liking reformers and reform proposals. Some people turn this around through a process of

Education & the Environment Initiative - Year 2011 (CA Dept of Education)

State Schools Chief Tom Torlakson Comments on
Education and the Environment Initiative Curriculum

SACRAMENTO — State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson issued the following statement today regarding the Education & the Environment Initiative (EEI) Curriculum:

"The lessons that are used to teach our public school students must be free of undue influence by special interests, whether they represent industry or environmentalists.

"Our curriculum review process is designed to ensure all school materials are factually accurate, free of bias, and aligned with our state's world-class academic standards.

"Today's report by California Watch raises questions about one minor section within one of 85 environmental curriculum units developed by the California Environmental Protection Agency.

"While this curriculum has been widely praised for its accuracy and fairness in addressing complex and controversial topics, I have asked my staff to work with CalEPA to identify any material where further review may be warranted."

For more information on EEI, please visit the California Department of Education's Web site at Education & the Environment Initiative Curriculum - Science.

# # # #

Tom Torlakson — State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Communications Division, Room 5206, 916-319-0818, Fax 916-319-0100

solidaridad: Economic Justice L.A. Calls Urgent Action: Tax Big Oil = Fund Education

Economic Justice L.A. Calls Urgent Action: Tax Big Oil = Fund Education

by Robert D. Skeels * rdsathene

This seemed worthy of publicizing.

What if we could get the oil companies to give schools kindergarten through universities 3 billion dollars a year? We can, if we get Proposition 1481 on the ballot. Authored by Cypress College Professor Peter Mathews, Prop 1481 is the ballot initiative that would tax oil extraction to fund education. California is the only state that does not tax oil extraction.

We can:
Make higher education affordable to all
Improve funding for K-12, reduce class size and prevent

Claims that city teachers and administrators cheating on standardized tests triple

BY RACHEL MONAHAN
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Monday, August 22nd 2011, 5:22 PM

Martin Shields/Getty

As the Bloomberg Administration increases the stakes on standardized tests, reports that teachers and administrators are cheating on exams has tripled, according to city data.

RELATED NEWS

Allegations of teachers and school administrators cheating have more than tripled since 2003, city data show.

As the Bloomberg administration has raised the stakes on standardized tests, the reports of test tampering and grade changing have increased to 225 last year from just 68 in 2003.

"There was a for a while a system of rewards with the bonuses -- and what could be considered punishment, judging the teacher (by the scores)," said Commissioner Richard Condon, noting the increase in the number of schools and the budget also helped account for the spike.

Condon's office took only 6 of last year's cheating cases, finding wrongdoing in two

Talking Teacher Layoffs - voiceofsandiego.org: Schooled: The Education Blog

Talking Teacher Layoffs

Posted: Monday, August 22, 2011 10:33 am

By Emily Alpert

When teachers get laid off, disadvantaged schools often get hit hardest because they tend to have the newest teachers, and the newest teachers usually get laid off first.

Civil rights groups launched a suit to try to curb that phenomenon in Los Angeles, arguing that if teachers were laid off strictly by seniority, the neediest kids would lose the most.

Los Angeles worked out a controversial settlement that spared some schools from layoffs but worsened them elsewhere. But what will happen here? Though teacher layoffs have

Jersey Jazzman: "Good Intentions"

"Good Intentions"

by Duke

I'm going to be cranking the blog down a bit as I take care of some personal things before school starts and work on some other projects. But before I go...

One more thought on the motivations of everyone involved in this increasingly heated debate about education "reform":

We're coming up on the two year anniversary of Chris Christie telling us over and over again that the NJEA does not have the best interests of children at heart. I don't even have to provide links because it's been ubiquitous and

Study: In NYC, traditional K-5, 6-8 grade arrangements do worst | GothamSchools

Study: In NYC, traditional K-5, 6-8 grade arrangements do worst

by Philissa Cramer

Graduating from one school to another for sixth grade is typical, but the arrangement is not ideal for student achievement

That’s according to a new study the compared the varied pathways that city students took to eighth grade from 1995 to 2002. The report, “The Path Not Taken: How Does School Organization Affect Eighth-Grade Achievement?”, was just released in the Summer 2011 issue of the journal Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis.

Led by Amy Ellen Schwartz and Leanna Stiefel at New York University, the researchers looked at “grade span paths,” or the grade configurations of the schools that students attended on their way to eighth grade. With more than 900 elementary and middle schools, New York City boasted 28 different grade span paths during the period

Education Research Report: Race and poverty often unjustifiably tied to school security measures

Race and poverty often unjustifiably tied to school security measures

by Jonathan Kantrowitz

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Elementary, middle, and high schools with large minority populations—but not necessarily higher crime rates—are far more likely than others to require students and visitors to pass through metal detectors, according to new research to be presented at the 106th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association.

In fact, the study finds that rates of student misbehavior and crime are only weakly and inconsistently related to school security measures.

"We find it disturbing that the adoption of school security is more closely related to student race and ethnicity and to socio-economic status than to actual criminal behavior," said study co-author Aaron Kupchik, an associate professor of sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware.

In their study, Kupchik and co-author Geoff Ward, an assistant professor of criminology at the University of California-Irvine, explore the use of five school security measures—metal detectors, surveillance cameras, full-

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Monday, August 22, 2011