Ackerman: I was threatened over the King charter deal — NewsWorks

Ackerman: I was threatened over the King charter deal — NewsWorks:

Ackerman: I was threatened over the King charter deal

September 17, 2011

By Bill Hangley Jr.
for Newsworks and the Public School Notebook

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Arlene Ackerman claims she was pressured multiple ways to overturn the King charter contract. (AP Photo)

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More Info:

• NewsWorks' continuing coverage of Martin Luther King High School
• A NEWSWORKS/PUBLIC SCHOOL NOTEBOOK JOINT INVESTIGATION
  Phila. Mayor Nutter promises probe into King charter mess
• NEWSWORKS/PUBLIC SCHOOL NOTEBOOK JOINT INVESTIGATION
  Philly school staffer 'shocked' by secret meeting
• NEWSWORKS/PUBLIC SCHOOL NOTEBOOK JOINT INVESTIGATION
  King parent: Schools chair browbeat us over charter deal
• A NEWSWORKS/PUBLIC SCHOOL NOTEBOOK INVESTIGATION
  Phila. school leader's actions on charter deal raise ethical concerns

Arlene Ackerman, Philadelphia's recently departed superintendent of schools, claims she was threatened last spring with disclosure of embarrassing information about her personal finances if she did not help a politically connected bidder, Foundations Inc., land a lucrative charter contract for Martin Luther King Jr. high school.

"I was told by someone that if I didn't get my mind right about this Foundations situation, that something would be leaked about my finances

ALPHAMOMFIA: The Danger of Special Education Scholarship Vouchers

ALPHAMOMFIA: The Danger of Special Education Scholarship Vouchers:

The Danger of Special Education Scholarship Vouchers

In Wisconsin, children who qualify for special education and their families are caught in the middle of a legislative battle over a mostly Republican-introduced bill called AB110. The bill is similar to many private school voucher programs for special education students that are being endorsed predominantly by Republicans in state legislatures throughout the country.

AB110 and other bills like it are a result of proposed legislation by the shadowy right wing group, the American Legislative Exchange Council, also known as ALEC. ALEC is responsible for ghostwriting model legislation that benefits corporations and the wealthy and is funded by its corporate members. The bills drafted by ALEC are then introduced by legislators as though they were the original ideas of the legislators themselves; there is no acknowledgement of ALEC's role in the bill-drafting process. The bottom line in all of this model legislation is that corporate profits are increased while the rights of the average citizen are decreased.

One of the most underhanded bills introduced by Wisconsin legislators, AB110 mandates that the option of a voucher be given to special education students for the purpose of using it for tuition at a

With Fraud Already Present, Was ALEC Involved in Expanding McKay Scholarships to Florida’s Special Needs Kids? | Scathing Purple Musings

With Fraud Already Present, Was ALEC Involved in Expanding McKay Scholarships to Florida’s Special Needs Kids? | Scathing Purple Musings:

With Fraud Already Present, Was ALEC Involved in Expanding McKay Scholarships to Florida’s Special Needs Kids?

by Bob Sikes

I don’t often use letters to the editor in a blog post, but Loudon, Tennessee’s Joy Pachucki writes something that may be important to Florida families. The expansion of McKay scholarships by Rick Scott and the state’s republican legislators to include any child with an IEP is in its first year. Pachucki writes to the Knoxville News:

Parents of kids in special education beware: Special education is under attack by the GOP across the nation via the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) — a powerful coalition of corporations and right-wing legislators, and viewable on the web site ALEC Exposed.

ALEC has worked out plans to trick families into giving up their federally protected educational benefits in exchange for cheap vouchers that can be used in unregulated, fly-by-night academies.

The best example of this is Florida’s (Jeb Bush) McKay special education scholarship fund, and the best proposed bill is AB110 in Wisconsin.

How does the scam work? “It is predicated on trading on parents’ legitimate frustrations for what

Michael Moore On His Penchant For 'Trouble' : NPR

Michael Moore On His Penchant For 'Trouble' : NPR:

Michael Moore On His Penchant For 'Trouble'

Michael Moore didn't plan on becoming a filmmaker. As a teenager growing up in the Midwest, he considered documentaries to be a bit like broccoli: good for you, but boring.

Instead, he spent his adolescent and young adult years rabble-rousing. He was elected to the school board when he was a senior in high school, became a young supporter of Richard Nixon, and even flirted with the idea of becoming a Catholic priest.

But once Moore got around to finally making his first film, he stumbled upon a new kind of documentary: confrontational, comedic and provocatively political. Roger & Me, about the decline of Moore's hometown, Flint, Mich., was the public's first glimpse of the documentarian's often brash interview style.

Moore talks with NPR's Neal Conan about his new memoir, Here Comes Trouble: Stories from My Life; why he bristles at being called controversial; and how he feels about the current partisan mood in the United States.

Interview Highlights

On when he committed himself to standing up against injustice

"When you think back to those pivotal moments ... you're trying to figure out, 'How did I get here?' and sometimes they aren't big things that happen in your life. Sometimes they're very small events.

"And I had just been elected to the school board, but I still had a week left of school. So I was both a student and the boss — or one of the bosses — of the vice principal. We're standing there in line, getting ready to go up to the graduation ceremony, and he's coming down the line making sure each of the boys have a tie on underneath their gown.

"The boy in front of me, [the vice principal] pulls his gown down and he sees a tie, but it's one of those bolo ties ... And he yanks him out of the line, and he says, 'You don't have a proper tie on, and you're not graduating.'

" 'But sir, this is a tie, this is what we wear.'

"And he yanks him out, and he literally takes him out the door. And ... his parents are sitting up there in the stands — go through the whole graduation — their son never comes out. Later they find him curled up in the back seat of their car crying, because he didn't get to graduate.

"But what bothered me really wasn't so much what the vice principal did. It's that I was standing right behind this kid, and I said nothing. I didn't want to cause any trouble. It was my graduation night; I didn't want to get thrown out. And so I stood there in silence. And his mother called me the next day and said, 'What can you do?' And I said, 'Well, we can't re-run the graduation.'

" 'Well, did you see it happen?'

" 'Yes.'

" 'Well, what did you do?'

" 'Um, nothing.'

"And this just — this just did a number on my own conscience. And I just thought, I will never be silent again. And I stood there and said nothing. And I just resolved at that moment, at 18 years old, that I will not stand silently by when I see some injustice taking place, even if it is the smallest thing ... And so I was kind of a different person from that moment on."

More info on pension meetings this weekend. « Fred Klonsky's blog

More info on pension meetings this weekend. « Fred Klonsky's blog:

More info on pension meetings this weekend.

by Fred Klonsky

I have to say that the video that the IEA posted yesterday, featuring IEA lobbyist Will Lovett was less informative than a member would have hoped for. And the production quality makes me wonder how my dues are being used.

Today, the IEA website posted information that was sightly more informative.

UPDATE: Pension meetings resume this week

A series of meetings to discuss state pension policy continues this week with sessions scheduled for September 19 and 20 in Chicago.

Represented in the meetings are public employee unions, including IEA, IFT and AFSCME, as well as state legislative leaders and the Illinois business community. IEA lobbyist Will Lovett is representing IEA in the informal discussions.

Legislative leaders announced in May their intention to hold these meetings after intense lobbying by IEA and other unions stopped proponents from calling for a full House vote on SB512,

Jersey Jazzman: "Choices"

Jersey Jazzman: "Choices":

"Choices"

by Duke

A couple of "choice" stories from the Garden State. Let's start with some chartery goodness:

The school spent $10,000 on hotel fees for a staff junket to Atlantic City, $5,600 on a year-end staff party at KatManDu restaurant, and $38,000 on flower boxes and campus landscaping. Visiting DOE staff also found "a weak educational program, lacking in rigor and not meeting the goals set forth in the school's charter," a spokesman said.

After a period of probation, the school was finally pressured to give up its charter in May, and the New Jersey State Police opened an investigation into school spending practices.

It wasn't the first charter school failure in New Jersey, or in Trenton. Forty charter

They need Teaching… not Punishment | Connected Principals

They need Teaching… not Punishment | Connected Principals:

They need Teaching… not Punishment

by Chris Wejr

Is this teaching? Photo from http://bit.ly/quGvf0

Last year, during the reading of Dr. Ross Greene’s book “Lost at School” (another must read for any parent or educator), the following question helped me to further drive my views on student discipline:

Why is it that when a student that struggles with reading or math… we support… yet when a student struggles with behaviour… we punish?

As some of you are probably aware I try to avoid using punishment and rewards to try to get students to behave in a certain way. When we change our mindset from a role of someone who gives out punishment to someone who teaches and supports, students end up learning the skills needed to be successful in a social setting. As Greene states, when we change our lens from “kids do well if they want to… to kids do well if they can“, we see

blue cheddar: Photos from Fighting Bob Fest, Madison Wisconsin, September 17, 2011 |

Photos from Fighting Bob Fest, Madison Wisconsin, September 17, 2011 |:

blue cheddar

a progressive blog in Wisconsin

Photos from Fighting Bob Fest, Madison Wisconsin, September 17, 2011

September 18, 2011

By bluecheddar

The top slideshow are 20 of my favorite photos from Fighting Bob Fest in Madison September 17, 2011.

Some people wanted to get copies of photos of themselves posing with Thom Hartmann etc. You should be able to right click on images in the image list at bottom and then save to your own computer. And if you’d like to share some on facebook, I have an album of the same images right here.

The photos in the image list also get much larger than the slideshow.

Republishing is OK, just please…: If you republish these to your personal page or blog, that’s fine, but please give a credit to “the blue cheddar blog” and a link back here. Thanks much.

blue cheddar

a progressive blog in Wisconsin

Karaoke Speech Therapy | Special Needs in Education

Karaoke Speech Therapy | Special Needs in Education:

Karaoke Speech Therapy

Communication Disorders graduate student Teresa Bularz uses singing and karaoke to aid in speech therapy of client at UW-Whitewater. For more info visit the website. academics.uww.edu

Question by bluguy57: Did The Focus On Bushisms In the Media Help Bush?
The media focused on the bushisms and people started joking about that and making “Bush is dumb” jokes.

I’m no fan of Bush(in fact I’m a radical leftist, Democrats are far right of me) but I don’t think he’s “stupid”. I think he was a manipulative genius and if he was smarter he would’ve been another Hitler.

And of course on a “for real” level everyone knows speaking strangely doesn’t mean someone is stupid. We all make mistakes when we speak. Some people,

A plea from Kimberly Davis. « Fred Klonsky's blog

A plea from Kimberly Davis. « Fred Klonsky's blog:

A plea from Kimberly Davis.

by Fred Klonsky

Dear Fred Klonsky,

I have a lifetime’s worth of reasons for wanting to save my brother Troy.

When I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at age 14, Troy left high school, signed up for night classes and started working so that he could take me to physical therapy and help my mother out financially.

It was my brother’s help and reassurance through my long struggle that led me to get out of my wheelchair. He is my hero.

But as you know, the state of Georgia has set an execution date for Troy on September 21st, based on supposed evidence against him that does not exist.

But we believe that with God’s help, we will prevail.

Will you help us to continue to fight to save his life? I need you to reach out to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole one last time. Click on the link to watch at the video message I recorded for the NAACP, and follow the instructions to send your letter:

http://action.naacp.org/KimberlyDavis

Last Thursday, Troy called to tell me he had just heard about the 660,000 petitions delivered to the Board of Pardons and Parole in his name. He was deeply moved. He told me he knew that had

Jersey Jazzman: Worst. Party. Ever.

Jersey Jazzman: Worst. Party. Ever.:

Worst. Party. Ever.

by Duke

Dear lord, this sounds like the worst bar mitzvah I've ever been to times 10:

Welcome to the official website of the EdReformies – Rockin’ Reform Revue! Check back often for updates and announcements on everything from the evening’s entertainment to how to prepare to join us on education reform’s Red Carpet to ROCK on October 20th!


18th Anniversary Gala

Gala & Awards Show

Featuring Live Performances by “The Reformers” & Real Rock Stars

And it's only $318 a ticket! Perfect for a teacher's salary!


Who are we honoring at this thing?

Honoring those who rock real reform!

B4K Decides To Engage Me

by Duke

I must admit, I was quite surprised to see B4K take issue with anything I write on this blog: I thought any mention of me was banned over there (again, I think we're just skipping right past the "then they laugh at you..." part).

I want to apologize to Mike Lilley, who wrote the post: I would have responded earlier, but I really didn't know you had written about me. I haven't had a chance to check B4K's site lately, as I am a working teacher and this is the beginning of the year. Well, better late than never:

You can use B4K’s “facts” – which, as you note, are unembellished and unspun – but please don’t presume to speak for us.   As the person who built B4K’s “facts” section, I take issue with a number of your points:

I would never presume to speak for you: I will, however, quote you all day long. And I always provide links so 

Robert Reich (Taxing the Rich, the Obama Way)

Robert Reich (Taxing the Rich, the Obama Way):

Warren Buffett is a tough negotiator, which is one reason why he’s the second-wealthiest person in...

Warren Buffett is a tough negotiator, which is one reason why he’s the second-wealthiest person in America.

So when the President refers to his new initiative to raise taxes on millionaires as the “Buffett rule” we might expect he’d start the bargaining with a tough position.

But this is Barack Obama, whose idea of negotiating is to give away half the house before he’s even asked the other side for the bathroom sink.

Apparently Obama will propose that people earning more than $1 million a year pay at least the same tax rate as middle-class earners. That’s aiming mighty low.

America’s median income is about $50,000. The typical taxpayer at that level pays approximately 20 percent in

Schools Matter: Gritty and Grateful: Manufacturing Morality and Engineering Character, Pt. 1

Schools Matter: Gritty and Grateful: Manufacturing Morality and Engineering Character, Pt. 1:

Gritty and Grateful: Manufacturing Morality and Engineering Character, Pt. 1

by Jim Horn

KIPP teachers believe their job is to teach 49 percent academics and 51 percent character. --Mike Feinberg

Dr. Martin Seligman and his fellow psychological engineers are on a campaign to save the world by making it "happy," or at least to make sure that those who are not "happy" attain a level of "character" so as not to intrude on the well-deserved happiness of those who already have attained "authentic happiness."

Seligman has consulted the sages from Aristotle to the Zuni to come up a list of 24 common traits found among human civilizations, past and present, that would seem to constitute qualities that represent the individual and