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Friday, September 30, 2011

Congress Takes Group Of Schoolchildren Hostage | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

Congress Takes Group Of Schoolchildren Hostage | The Onion - America's Finest News Source:

Congress Takes Group Of Schoolchildren Hostage

'We Need $12 Trillion Or All These Kids Die'

SEPTEMBER 29, 2011 | ISSUE 47•39

WASHINGTON—Brandishing shotguns and semiautomatic pistols, members of the 112th U.S. Congress took a class of visiting schoolchildren hostage today, barricading themselves inside the Capitol rotunda and demanding $12 trillion dollars in cash.

Enlarge ImageIf the money is not delivered by this evening, members of Congress say they will shoot a new child every hour on the hour.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), who has emerged as spokesman for the bipartisan group, informed FBI negotiators this morning that the ransom was to be placed in stainless-steel suitcases and left on the Capitol steps by 4 p.m. sharp. If their demands are not met in full, the 11-term representative announced, "all the kids will die."

"Bring us the money and we let the children go, simple as that," said Boehner, appearing in the East Portico with a serrated switchblade held to one of the fourth-grader's throats. "If you

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Join us via webcast today for our teacher prep event Panel discussion starting now; submit your questions via Twitter

Panel discussion starting now; submit your questions via Twitter:

Join us via webcast today for our teacher prep event

by Mandy Zatynski



If you can’t be here in person with us at the Capital Hilton for U.S. Secretary Arne Duncan’s plan for teacher education reform and improvement, you’re in luck:

You can watch via live webcast here.

You can follow us on Twitter @EducationSector or #teacherprep.

And you can check in for updates here on the blog.

Duncan will release his plan at 9 a.m. Afterward, National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel and Teach For America Founder and CEO Wendy Kopp will share their thoughts. And finally, our distinguished panel will share their insights. You can submit questions for the panel via Twitter @EducationSector.

Stay tuned!


Panel discussion starting now; submit your questions via Twitter

by Mandy Zatynski



Our panel will begin discussion now. Panelists include George Noell, executive director of strategic research and analysis at the Louisiana Department of Education; Deborah Loewenberg Ball, dean of the School of Education at the University of Michigan; Sharon Robinson, president and chief executive officer of the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education; Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality; and Elena Silva, senior policy analyst at Education Sector.

The panel will be moderated by Education Sector’s Executive Director Richard Lee Colvin.

Watch live here and submit your own questions via Twitter @EducationSector.

We’ll also post updates here on the blog.


TFA’s Kopp supports Duncan’s plan

by Mandy Zatynski



Teach For America Founder and CEO Wendy Kopp said she supports U.S. Secretary Arne Duncan’s proposal for teacher preparation reform and improvement.


NEA’s Van Roekel responds to Duncan’s plan

by Mandy Zatynski



National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel said government’s plan for teacher education reform “is a nice change of tone, to talk about building the profession, instead of tearing it down. There’s too much talk of blame, of firing teachers.”

Roekel spoke to a packed room at the Capital Hilton, following U.S. Secretary of Education Arne


Sec. Duncan releases plan for teacher prep reform

by Mandy Zatynski



U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s plan for teacher education reform and improvement calls for urgency, accountability, and restoring quality to the profession nationwide.

“Teacher preparation programs are operated largely in dark,” Duncan told a packed room of education reformers at the Capital Hilton in Washington this morning. “A good feedback loop and a good accountability system … would scale them up, help them grow.

“Under our plan, teacher preparation programs would be held to clear standard of quality,” he said.

The plan, titled “Our Future, Our Teachers: The Obama Administration’s Plan for Teacher Education Reform and

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Achievement Gap my but, It's a POVERTY GAP | Do Something

11 Facts about Education and Poverty in America | Do Something:

11 Facts about Education and Poverty in America

  1. What is the Poverty Line, anyway? According to the U.S. Census Bureau, it's a family of four (two adults, two children) that earns less than $21,834.
  2. Still, $35,000 is basic-needs budget for a U.S. family of four (two adults, two children), as calculated in An Atlas of Poverty in America.
  3. In 2008, nearly 43.6 million people Americans lived in poverty (about 13.2% of the population); 12.9 million were under the age of 18.
  4. In the US, poverty is still tied to race: 24.7% of the African American population live below the poverty line while 8.6% of Caucasians do.
  5. School budgets are tied to property taxes. This is why schools in poor neighborhoods get about half as much money per student than schools in affluent neighborhoods.
  6. Three-quarters of the nation's schools (almost 60,000) report needing repairs, renovations or modernization in order to reach good condition.
  7. Not surprisingly, most schools in bad condition are in cities where at least 70% of students are below the poverty line.
  8. Urban students are less likely to graduate than their suburban counterparts. High school graduation rates are 15% lower in the nation’s urban schools when compared with those located in the suburbs.
  9. Graduation rates are also lower among certain groups, particularly ethnic minorities and males. In 2008, the graduation rate among African-Americans was 61.5% compared to 81% for whites.
  10. In 2008, 17 of the nation's 50 largest cities had high school graduation rates lower than 50%, with the lowest rates reported in Detroit (24.9%), Indianapolis (30.5%) and Cleveland (34.1%).
  11. Children of poor families are up to six times more likely to drop out than wealthy children.

Are you inspired to make a difference? Check out our tips and ideas for your drive!
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20 years of school reform yields widening achievement gaps, no reading gains | WBEZ

20 years of school reform yields widening achievement gaps, no reading gains | WBEZ:

20 years of school reform yields widening achievement gaps, no reading gains

University of Chicago findings challenge common assumptions about test score gains in Chicago

BY LINDA LUTTON | SEP. 29, 2011

A parent purchased the chairs and desks in Alcott's first grade classroom.

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If you look at a graph of test scores for Chicago elementary schools, you see a line that goes up and up over the years. Reading scores are soaring, math scores too.

Forget that, says researcher Elaine Allensworth.

ALLENSWORTH: In the elementary schools, reading scores have really been flat for the last 20 years.

That statement right there turns on its head everything we’ve been told about Chicago’s test scores.

Allensworth and her colleagues at the University of Chicago’s Consortium on Chicago School Research have done something no one else has. The highly respected group released a dramatic study Friday linking the major standardized tests

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The Herald-Sun - Challenging culture of teach to the test

The Herald-Sun - Challenging culture of teach to the test:

Challenging culture of "teach to the test"
09.29.11 - 06:30 pm
By Melody Guyton Butts

mbutts@heraldsun.com; 419-6684

DURHAM — Diane Ravitch — education professor, author, former U.S. assistant secretary of education and an outspoken skeptic about national testing — will speak about school reform Monday at Duke University.

Durham school board member Natalie Beyer on Wednesday called the internationally known education activist “an extraordinary advocate for America’s public school students and teachers” and said she hopes all of Durham’s teachers and principals are able to attend the talk.

Among those firmly planted in Page Auditorium on Monday evening will be Rogers-Herr Middle School teacher Dov Rosenberg, who said Ravitch’s voice is a voice of reason at a time when teachers often are under attack.

He was disheartened after seeing the documentary “Waiting for Superman” and its emphasis on charter schools as the answer to the nation’s education woes. “I was just
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Getting Artistic with Standardized-Test Answer Sheets - Design - GOOD

Getting Artistic with Standardized-Test Answer Sheets - Design - GOOD:

The Testing Bubble

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“It wasn't filling in the bubbles that bothered me about taking standardized tests. The first part where you fill in the area for your name and birthdate I really enjoyed actually. One of the first tests like that I took was in sixth grade on a hot, muggy afternoon in Philadelphia. I remember thinking about how at some point it would be over and I could go outside and play a sadistic game with a tennis ball we had invented. By the end I couldn't stay in that room a moment longer; it was like the place was about to implode. I probably got nailed in the back with the ball by Christian Garfield like 10 minutes later.”

Tucker Nichols is an artist based in San Francisco. His work has been shown in galleries and museums around the world.


The seventh-century Chinese emperor Yangdi is usually remembered as a megalomaniac who led his newly united nation into a series of debilitating wars. But Yangdi’s real legacy is his development of the world’s first standardized testing system. The idea was to locate China’s most talented rural scholars and bring them into the nascent empire’s civil service.

The history of education is filled with such earnest, progressive hopes for stan- dardized testing; Napoleon built the French bureaucracy in much the same way, and the SAT, for all its flaws, played an important role in opening up the Ivy League to Jews, Catholics, and public-school students.

The University of California and other elite colleges now acknowledge

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Education Research Report: More than Half of States Fail at Teaching the Civil Rights Movement

Education Research Report: More than Half of States Fail at Teaching the Civil Rights Movement:

More than Half of States Fail at Teaching the Civil Rights Movement

by Jonathan Kantrowitz
Ω

Though the civil rights movement is one of the defining events of U.S. history, most states fail when it comes to teaching the movement to students, a first-of-its-kind study released today by the Southern Poverty Law Center has found.

The study – Teaching the Movement: The State of Civil Rights Education 2011 – examined state standards and curriculum requirements related to the study of the modern civil rights movement for all 50 states and the District of Columbia. It was conducted by the SPLC’s Teaching Tolerance program and includes a forward by noted civil rights activist and historian Julian Bond.

The study compared the requirements in state standards to a body of knowledge that reflects what civil rights historians and educators consider core information about the civil rights movement. It found that:

A shocking number of states – 35 – received grades of “F.”
- Sixteen states, where local officials set specific policies and requirements for their school districts, have no
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Does Lansing really want to improve public education, or do they have other motives? - theoaklandpress.com

GUEST OPINION: Does Lansing really want to improve public education, or do they have other motives? - theoaklandpress.com:

Does Lansing really want to improve public education, or do they have other motives?

Published: Friday, September 30, 2011

By David F. Larson
Birmingham Public Schools superintendent

Governor Snyder and our legislators are engaged in another round of reform measures for public education. While inspecting these set of bills closely, one would wonder if their interests are genuinely intent on improving public education or if there are other ulterior interests and motives involved. Let’s take a close look at some of this new legislation.

Lifting the cap on Charter Schools — While touting the need to have fewer school districts in Michigan to save on operational dollars, the Governor is promoting more charter schools. These additional “little school districts”, that do not need to comply with regulations and guidelines as K-12 public schools, will drain dollars from an already depleted School Aid Fund. I would encourage the

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Why Achievement Gap Mania Undermines Reform :: Frederick M. Hess

Why Achievement Gap Mania Undermines Reform :: Frederick M. Hess:

Why Achievement Gap Mania Undermines Reform

by Frederick M. Hess • Sep 30, 2011 at 7:53 am
Cross-posted from Education Week

All right, enough of this already. This is the last day on "Our Achievement Gap Mania" (at least for now); I promise. But some folks have wondered how I can be goofy enough to argue that such a popular rhetorical strategy is bad for sustaining reform. My default answer is to encourage folks to read the whole piece. But since many of you are busy, let's highlight a few key points here.

The champions of the gap-closing gospel tend to regard themselves as tactical geniuses, and to think of the achievement gap mantra as a brilliant political strategy. The irony is that, if you stop to think about it, this would seem to be at odds with their persistent frustration that they don't get more support from suburbanites and the middle class--and their search for clever new stratagems with which to broaden their base of support. I'd suggest that the problem is actually less their tactics than the inherently self-limiting appeal of the gap-closing

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