Today's Big Education Ape - PostRank Top AM Posts #ows

Today's Big Education Ape - PostRank Top AM Posts #ows

In Friday's paper: Area charter schools report low test scores - Rockford, IL - Rockford Register Star

Big Education Ape - PostRank (PostRank: All) - 3 hours ago

In Friday's paper: Area charter schools report low test scores - Rockford, IL - Rockford Register Star:In Friday's paper: Area charter schools report low test scoresROCKFORD — Rockford’s charter schools were ranked near the bottom of the heap when local Illinois Standards Achievement Test scores were released earlier this week, and school leaders say it’ll take time to make gains.All three public charter schools fell below the Rockford School District average and well below the state average in reading, math ... more »

Today's Big Education Ape - PostRank Top AM Posts #ows

Big Education Ape - PostRank (PostRank: All) - 3 hours ago

Today's Big Education Ape - PostRank Top AM Posts #owsA GOLDEN CHALK AWARD GOES TO — « Teachers Fight BackBig Education Ape - PostRank (PostRank: All)-6 hours agoA GOLDEN CHALK AWARD GOES TO — « Teachers Fight Back:A GOLDEN CHALK AWARD GOES TO —by alkleenAnother Golden Chalk Award has been given out. This one goes to Mary Fergus, a spokeswoman with the Illinois State Board of Education. She was explaining to reporters why Illinois students did so poorly on the ... more »

Longer school day: Union to announce agreement with CPS - chicagotribune.com

Big Education Ape - PostRank (PostRank: All) - 3 hours ago

Longer school day: Union to announce agreement with CPS - chicagotribune.com:Union to announce deal with CPS on longer school dayMadigan has spoken with city, labor leaders in last few days, her spokeswoman saysComments21Share211By Joel Hood, Chicago Tribune reporter8:53 p.m. CDT, November 3, 2011The Chicago Teachers Union has called a news conference at noon Friday to discuss details of an agreement reached with Chicago Public Schools over the longer school day issue.Neither side would provide specifics of the agreement Thursday.But a ... more »

Sac City middle school consolidation plan criticized - Sac Moms Club & Family - sacbee.com

Big Education Ape - PostRank (PostRank: All) - 3 hours ago

Sac City middle school consolidation plan criticized - Sac Moms Club Family - sacbee.com:Sac City middle school consolidation plan criticizedShare By Anne GonzalesBee CorrespondentPublished: Friday, Nov. 4, 2011 - 12:00 am | Page 1BSutter Middle School seemingly dodged one consolidation plan, but it still may have a fight on its hands to preserve what some describe as a jewel of the city's school system.Sutter parents and students turned out at the Sacramento City Unified School District meeting Thursday night to ... more »

Pension killer. What’s the over/under? One. You. « Fred Klonsky's blog

Big Education Ape - PostRank (PostRank: All) - 3 hours ago

Pension killer. What’s the over/under? One. You. « Fred Klonsky's blog:Pension killer. What’s the over/under? One. You.by Fred KlonskyThe other morning my friend Matthew was trying to explain the betting concept of over/under to Cynthia, our music teacher.Of course we don’t actually do any gambling at work. Absolutely no Super Bowl squares. No NCAA brackets. That would be wrong.But we were talking about Vegas. As you know, what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Including your money.At the sports books ... more »

Occupy Wall Street to Mayor Bloomberg: Get Your Facts Straight; Stop the Fear Mongering | OccupyWallSt.org #ows

Big Education Ape - PostRank (PostRank: All) - 3 hours ago

Occupy Wall Street to Mayor Bloomberg: Get Your Facts Straight; Stop the Fear Mongering | OccupyWallSt.org:Occupy Wall Street to Mayor Bloomberg: Get Your Facts Straight; Stop the Fear Mongeringby OccupyWallStYesterday New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg alleged that Occupy Wall Street participants at Liberty Square (Zuccotti Park) are chasing criminals out of the park instead of reporting them to police. In reality, Occupy Wall Street has its own well-trained internal security force, but this team does not substitute for the ... more »

NYC Educator: Spamolicious

Big Education Ape - PostRank (PostRank: All) - 3 hours ago

NYC Educator: Spamolicious:Spamoliciousby NYC EducatorEvery few days our comment section gets spammed. Sometimes the spammers choose posts from years back, perhaps thinking I won't notice. The spammers who love this site best are those who are selling term papers. Here's one of their most recent comments:It is absolutely an fantastic advice and gives abundant advice about education. Thanks for providing such affectionate of advice with us. Thanks for sharing.You have to wonder who would want to buy a term paper ... more »

Grumpy Educators: Oregon Parent Opts Out of Standardized Testing

Big Education Ape - PostRank (PostRank: All) - 3 hours ago

Grumpy Educators: Oregon Parent Opts Out of Standardized Testing:Oregon Parent Opts Out of Standardized TestingOregon parent Jen Norman explains why she will no permit her son to take standardized tests this year.We can complain about the choices our administrators make, but at the end of the day, their job is to get every student to pass the OAKS test. That’s the system that is in place, and they’re working very hard to ensure that it happens. They’re doing a good ... more »

Education's Revolving Door: Former school board President Canter heads Green Dot charters - latimes.com

Big Education Ape - PostRank (PostRank: All) - 3 hours ago

Former school board President Canter heads Green Dot charters - latimes.com:Former school board President Canter heads Green Dot chartersFormer Los Angeles school board President Marlene Canter will head the governing board for Green Dot Public Schools, one of the nation’s largest charter school groups, the organization announced Thursday.The locally based nonprofit operates schools mostly in the low-income, heavily minority areas of south and southwest Los Angeles. Its best-known effort is the takeover of Locke High School, near Watts, where academic ... more »

A GOLDEN CHALK AWARD GOES TO — « Teachers Fight Back

Big Education Ape - PostRank (PostRank: All) - 14 hours ago

A GOLDEN CHALK AWARD GOES TO — « Teachers Fight Back:A GOLDEN CHALK AWARD GOES TO —by alkleenAnother Golden Chalk Award has been given out. This one goes to Mary Fergus, a spokeswoman with the Illinois State Board of Education. She was explaining to reporters why Illinois students did so poorly on the national tests, but much better on the Illinois Standards Achievement Tests.She was quoted as saying, ” It’s a different test and our students are not necessarily taught ... more »

Eviction Defense! | OccupyWallSt.org #OWS

Big Education Ape - PostRank (PostRank: All) - 14 hours ago

Eviction Defense! | OccupyWallSt.org:Eviction Defense!by OccupyWallStSign up for the eviction defense text blast!Send a text to the number 23559, with the the message @occupyalertThis will be used for emergency alerts and announcements.Three weeks ago NYPD delivered what was effectively a notice of eviction, telling residents of Liberty Square that Brookfield, with the help of the city, was going to clean the park. Instead, #OWS mobilized, organizing a mass clean up, mobilizing thousands of supporters, and flooding the mayors office with ... more »

Washington Post Co Silences Employees with Intimidation: Kaplan again | Dailycensored.com

Big Education Ape - PostRank (PostRank: All) - 14 hours ago

Washington Post Co Silences Employees with Intimidation: Kaplan again | Dailycensored.com:Washington Post Co Silences Employees with Intimidation: Kaplan againWritten by Danny WeilBusiness, MediaNov 3, 20110diggShare Many of you know of the case of Pfc Bradley Manning. The government has alleged he leaked documents to Wikileaks and has caged him for months now in an attempt to let others know not to mess with the US government and its classified documents. Well, wlelcome to The Washington Post Company, a company that ... more »

Some High-Performing Florida Charter Schools “Run by or Connected” to Legislators | Scathing Purple Musings

Big Education Ape - PostRank (PostRank: All) - 14 hours ago

Some High-Performing Florida Charter Schools “Run by or Connected” to Legislators | Scathing Purple Musings:Some High-Performing Florida Charter Schools “Run by or Connected” to Legislatorsby Bob SikesFrom Jeffrey Solochek at GRADEBOOK:Keeping with new state law, the Florida Department of Education has blessed 104 charter schools as “high performing” this year. The appellation grants these schools added powers, making it even more difficult for local school boards to govern them. (See Pasco County’s recent deliberations over a Charter Schools USA application.)The ... more »

Today's Big Education Ape - PostRank Top AM Posts #ows

Big Education Ape - PostRank (PostRank: All) - 14 hours ago

Today's Big Education Ape - PostRank Top AM Posts #owsBecause I'm Worth It? - Teacher in a Strange Land - Education Week TeacherBig Education Ape - PostRank (PostRank: All)-17 minutes agoBecause I'm Worth It? - Teacher in a Strange Land - Education Week Teacher:Because I'm Worth It?by Nancy FlanaganI worked for two years at a non-profit whose mission centered on improving teaching. The first and most important thing I learned there was that nobody--not the most supportive policy wonk, not ... more »

What We Can Learn From High-Performing Charter Schools: Treat Teachers as Professionals | LFA: Join The Conversation - Public School Insights

What We Can Learn From High-Performing Charter Schools: Treat Teachers as Professionals | LFA: Join The Conversation - Public School Insights:

What We Can Learn From High-Performing Charter Schools: Treat Teachers as Professionals

by Tarsi Dunlop

Too often when discussing the challenges public K-12 education faces, sweeping generalizations are made that in addition to being inaccurate, unfairly categorize professional educators and public schools as uniformly unsuccessful or at best inadequate. For instance, there is no proof that charter schools are guaranteed to produce better results than traditional public schools. In fact, the best research to date suggests that just 17% of charter schools outperform traditional public schools – and that 37% of them actually perform worse, though that is a statistic

Democurmudgeon: Charter School Networks Failing, New Orleans all Charter District Gets low Grades.

Democurmudgeon: Charter School Networks Failing, New Orleans all Charter District Gets low Grades.:

Charter School Networks Failing, New Orleans all Charter District Gets low Grades.

by Democurmudgeon

So what’s the point of running parallel school districts when they offer up the same results and problems?

This study of larger groups of charter networks, thought to expand successful technics within their systems, did not achieve that goal.

Edweek: A new national study on the effectiveness of networks that operate charter schools finds overall that their middle school students’ test scores in reading, mathematics, science, and social studies aren’t significantly better than those of students in regular public schools. The findings from the research group Mathematica and the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington Bothell: The researchers focused on charter-management organizations to explore whether that model could be effective for scaling up the successes of individual charter schools. CMOs exist in part to address the unevenness in quality from charter to charter … And

Diary of a Social Art-tivist Mommy: DC Parent Power OPEN Meeting Monday

Diary of a Social Art-tivist Mommy: DC Parent Power OPEN Meeting Monday:

DC Parent Power OPEN Meeting Monday

by ART-tivist Mommy

DC Parent Power Open Meeting Invite

You are invited to an open meeting for “DC Parent Power” to look for common ground for civic engagement around public education in the District.

THIS Monday, November 7th, 2011

at

Juanita E. Thornton/Shepherd Park Neighborhood Library,

Room: SPK Room A,

Time: 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM

This is an open gathering of a group of DCPS parents and education advocates joining together to improve public education by re-engaging DCPS, District government education agencies and elected officials with the major constituency who use the schools.

City families, teachers & interested community members are welcome to participate.

We initially came together inspired by the National Save Our Schools event on the Mall and conference in July. The initial gathering indicated strong sentiment for:

· Authentic public engagement
· Transparency at all stages of policy development
· Less emphasis on standardized testing
· Richer curriculum
· Strong backing for public education, as opposed to increasing privatization
· Decreasing racial and economic school segregation
· Use of proven methods in all levels of school reform
· Equitable funding for all Wards

If interested in coming, please contact Miriam Cutelis at Miriam.Cutelis@yahoo.com with an RSVP if you plan to attend or if you want more information.
**Feel free to forward this invitation to other individuals or groups who might be interested.

Transformers Top Ten List

Transformers Top Ten List:

Transformers Top Ten List

by NancyFlanagan

This is a blog to tell SOS readers about IDEC 2012 Week.

And–the IDEC 2012 Conference in Puerto Rico next March, a celebration of democratic education– education that is human, powerful, relevant and transformative. Right up Save Our Schools’ alley.

So–how do you transform public education in a world where data and profit trump human needs?

How do you create a climate where education is continuously reinvented–collaboratively and sustainably–in forms that honor our democratic roots and the gifts of children? How do we foster equity and creativity, when the power elite are demanding standardization and rewarding meaningless credentials?

Gotta start somewhere.

Talking to public school teachers (who still serve some 85% of American kids) feels like an exercise in psychotherapy these days. Teachers are beaten down, their natural desire to help kids repressed, autonomy

NAEP: A flawed benchmark producing the same old story - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

NAEP: A flawed benchmark producing the same old story - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post:

NAEP: A flawed benchmark producing the same old story

by Valerie Strauss

This was written by James Harvey, executive director of the National Superintendents Roundtable. Harvey, who helped write the seminal 1983 report “A Nation at Risk,” is the author or co-author of four books and dozens of articles on education and has been examining the history of NAEP as part of his doctoral studies at Seattle University.

Read full article >>

Board and Mayor agree to stop breaking the law. « Fred Klonsky's blog

Board and Mayor agree to stop breaking the law. « Fred Klonsky's blog:

Board and Mayor agree to stop breaking the law.

by Fred Klonsky

In an agreement between the Chicago Teachers Union and the Chicago Board which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the 5th floor of City Hall, Rahm Emanuel agreed to stop breaking the law and live by the Collective Bargaining Agreement. Nothing in the agreement stops the CTU from pursuing their complaint with the Illinois Education Labor Relations Board. The Board promises to halt their school by school attack on the CBA.

Sisters and Brothers:

Yesterday, the CTU leadership

"Tests" for Kindergarteners? - Dana Goldstein

"Tests" for Kindergarteners? - Dana Goldstein:

"Tests" for Kindergarteners?

I'll be in Mexico from Sunday through Wednesday, so this will be my last post until late next week. In the meantime, check out my new piece at Slate, which examines the best and not-so-great practices in "kindergarten readiness assessment"--yes, the so-called kindergarten "tests" the Obama administration is asking states to develop, and which have dusted up some controversy.

Read it!

At the National Association of Multicultural Education conference today

Parents United for Responsible Education » Blog Archive » At the NAME conference today:

At the NAME conference today

by admin

The National Association of Multicultural Education (NAME) has been holding their 21st annual international conference here in Chicago this week. NAME’s mission is toadvance and advocate for equity and social justice through multicultural education.

I’ll be on a panel this afternoon with friend and true education reformer Bill Ayers and a bunch of other people, all who have contributed to a (we hope) soon-to-be-published book called “Educational Courage: Resisting the Ambush of Public Education.”

The book will offer stories of people and groups that have stood up to the recent attacks on public education to offer hope and some ideas for resistance.

In my allotted 5 minutes, I’m going to run through a few highlights of PURE’s actions, from our formation as an

Occupy Oakland Meets Their Goals | Seattle Education #OWS

Occupy Oakland Meets Their Goals | Seattle Education:

Occupy Oakland Meets Their Goals

by seattleducation2011

Occupy Oakland demonstrators stand atop a railroad scaffold at the Port of Oakland on Wednesday.

I am going to start with an e-mail that my daughter sent me about her experiences during the General Strike in Oakland.

The day was wonderful, but the cops came in force at midnight; check out what I posted on your

School Tech Connect: Experts Say...

School Tech Connect: Experts Say...:

Experts Say...

by noreply@blogger.com (Tim)

There's apparently a Friedman Unit for charter schools. Four years.

I couldn't care less. The school is probably doing the best it can with the kids it has. If it were a traditional public

The "Parenting Problem" is a "Poverty Problem" - Dana Goldstein

The "Parenting Problem" is a "Poverty Problem" - Dana Goldstein:

The "Parenting Problem" is a "Poverty Problem"

by Dana Goldstein

"We have a parenting problem, not a poverty problem," Mike Petrilli writes at Flypaper. I agree that parenting matters greatly to a child's academic success or failure, and in fact may be the single largest determining factor. But Petrilli concludes that the best way to solve the "parenting problem" is through cultural messaging promoting marriage and stigmatizing divorce, so that kids benefit from growing up in two-income households. This ignores, I think, the concrete reality of life in many low-income neighborhoods, where women are making a rational choice when they remain single.

Here in New York, for example, only one of every four young black men has a job. The communities from which these men hail have also been decimated by the drug war; 17 percent of adult black males have been incarcerated, compared to 2.6 percent of white men. In addition, low-income women, regardless of race, are

Occupy Wall Street to Obama: Don't Be Big Banks' Puppet; No Immunity Deal for Crooks | OccupyWallSt.org #OWS

Occupy Wall Street to Obama: Don't Be Big Banks' Puppet; No Immunity Deal for Crooks | OccupyWallSt.org:

Occupy Wall Street to Obama: Don't Be Big Banks' Puppet; No Immunity Deal for Crooks

by OccupyWallSt

To help expose the looming cash-for-immunity deal between the Obama administration and big banks, Occupy Wall Street on Saturday, November 5 will march from Liberty Square to the U.S. Court House Building at Foley Square.

The march will gather at 2:00pm on the east side steps at Liberty Square (Zuccotti Park), and will arrive at Foley Square at 3:00pm. Join the Facebook event page

President Obama is on the brink of cutting a backroom deal that would give bankers broad immunity for illegally throwing tens of thousands of Americans out of their homes. The Administration is pressuring state attorneys general to abandon an ongoing investigation into the massive "robo-signing" fraud, in exchange for a relatively small payoff by the banks.

Numerous investigations by state and federal authorities have demonstrated that banks used illegal procedures

In Friday's paper: Area charter schools report low test scores - Rockford, IL - Rockford Register Star

In Friday's paper: Area charter schools report low test scores - Rockford, IL - Rockford Register Star:

In Friday's paper: Area charter schools report low test scores

ROCKFORD — Rockford’s charter schools were ranked near the bottom of the heap when local Illinois Standards Achievement Test scores were released earlier this week, and school leaders say it’ll take time to make gains.

All three public charter schools fell below the Rockford School District average and well below the state average in reading, math and science.

“That’s not where we want them to be,” said Michael Lane, CEO of Galapagos Charter Schools, which has a campus in Rockford and Chicago.

Of the district’s three charter schools, Galapagos scored lowest — 46.5