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Sunday, January 8, 2012

Big Education Ape: 1-8-12 PM The Politicization Of Educational Research EDition #OWS #edreform

Big Education Ape: Ed News Now:
Big Education Ape: Ed News Now

Published by Coopmike48 – 7 news spotters today

The Politicization Of Educational Research

edwize.org - Last Friday, an analysis of the “value-added” contributions of public school teachers authored by a trio of economists, Harvard’s Raj Chetty and John Friedman and Columbia’s Jonah Rockoff, was unve...

DianeRavitch

Chicago is Ground Zero for Attacks on Public Education

dailykos.com - A new Labor Beat video out in January 2012 adds to the growing list of videos that teachers, parents, students and supporters of real public schools can draw on to educate themselves, their colleag...

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coopmike48 Big Education Ape: Schooling in the Ownership Society: Romney and Bain Capital knee-deep in corporate-style reform. - goo.gl/aE81840 seconds ago · reply · retweet · favorite

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coopmike48 Big Education Ape: Why Teach For America Is Not Welcome in My Classroom | LA Progressive -goo.gl/0PEx421 seconds ago · reply · retweet · favorite

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coopmike48 Big Education Ape: City of Sacramento finds Occupy defendants guilty without trial : Indybay #ows -goo.gl/n9HpXabout 1 minute ago · reply · retweet · favorite

EducationSee all

Dutch Teachers to Strike

teachersolidarity.com - Dutch School Students demonstrating in 2007 Dutch teachers are to go on strike against a proposed increase in their working hours Dutch secondary teachers – who are members of the union Teachers in...

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SocietySee all

Has Obama Waged A War On Religion? : NPR

npr.org - Enlarge Joe Drivas/Getty Images Some political and religious leaders say there is a White House-led war against religion. Joe Drivas/Getty Images Some political and religious leaders say there is a...

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PoliticsSee all

Attack ads to target Mitt Romney's work at Bain Capital

latimes.com - Reporting from Washington— Voters in South Carolina are about to witness an attack on Mitt Romney and the work of a private equity firm that made him wealthy and has provided the underpinnings for ...

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The Gaming Industry's Girl Gamer Problem

forbes.com - Vette from Star Wars: The Old Republic in her shock collar. Last week I wrote about the option in Star Wars: The Old Republic to torture a slave companion named Vette by shocking her with a shock-c...

coopmike48

Intimacy Intensifies in Women's 'Second Adulthood'

womensenews.org - Despite conventional wisdom dictating that intimacy ends at midlife for women, Suzanne Braun Levine says this is untrue in her new book "How We Love Now." In this except, she describes how love act...

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Behold the OccuPirates! | MyFDL

my.firedoglake.com - On Wednesday, January 18, the OccuPirates of Occupy MN, led by Nick Espinosa, will be making their own special variant of a Booty Call on US Bank. They demand that the US Bank pirates, who are far ...

coopmike48

Linguists name 'occupy' as 2011's word of the year

us.cnn.com - By Stephanie Gallman, CNN updated 11:05 PM EST, Sat January 7, 2012"Occupy" is 2011's word of the year, winning a runoff vote by a whopping majority.(CNN) -- The linguists have spoken and they have...

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After 10 Years, It’s Time for a New NCLB | ED.gov Blog

After 10 Years, It’s Time for a New NCLB | ED.gov Blog:

After 10 Years, It’s Time for a New NCLB

Posted on January 8, 2012 by Arne Duncan

The following op-ed appeared in the January 8, 2012 edition of the Washington Post.

Ten years ago today, President Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act. The law has improved American education in some ways, but it also still has flaws that need to be fixed.

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) for the first time exposed achievement gaps and created a conversation about how to close them. The law has held schools accountable for the performance of all students no matter their race, income level, English-proficiency or disability. Schools can no longer point to average scores while hiding an achievement gap that is morally unacceptable and economically unsustainable.

But NCLB has significant flaws. It created an artificial goal of proficiency that encouraged states to set low standards to make it easier for students to meet the goal. The act’s emphasis on test scores as the primary measure of school performance has narrowed the curriculum, and the one-size-fits-all accountability system has mislabeled schools as failures even if their students are demonstrating real academic growth. The law is overly prescriptive and doesn’t allow districts to create improvement plans based on their unique needs. It also has not supported states as they create teacher evaluation systems that use multiple measures to identify highly effective teachers and support the instructional improvement of all teachers.

The question today is how to build on NCLB’s success and fix its problems. Fortunately, states are leading the way. In Washington, we need to do everything we can to support their work.

Over the past two years, 45 states and the District of Columbia have shown tremendous courage by raising their academic standards to measure whether students are truly prepared for success in college and careers. To measure students’ progress toward those standards, 44 states and the District are working together to create assessments based on the common set of standards developed by educators, governors and state education chiefs. What’s more, states and school districts have adopted bold and comprehensive reforms to support academic achievement for all students. These reforms are improving teacher and principal evaluation and support, as well as turning around low-performing schools and expanding access to high-quality schools.

Unfortunately, the law is unintentionally creating barriers for these reforms. States that have chosen to raise standards will soon need to explain why student scores are dropping. Instead, they should be able to highlight students’ academic growth. School districts are stuck using NCLB’s definition of a highly qualified teacher based solely on paper credentials, without taking into account the teacher’s ability to improve student learning. And the law continues to encourage schools to narrow curriculum at the expense of important subjects such as history, civics, science, the arts and physical education. After 10 years of these flawed policies, our nation’s teachers and students deserve better.

President Obama is offering states flexibility from NCLB in exchange for comprehensive plans to raise standards; to create fair, flexible and focused accountability systems; and to improve systems for teacher and principal evaluation and support. This flexibility will not give states a pass on accountability. It will demand real reform.

So far, 39 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have expressed interest in this flexibility. The Education Department is working with the first group of applicants.

Although Congress has begun the process of reauthorizing NCLB, we can’t wait for the extended legislative process to be completed. States and school districts need relief from NCLB right now.

Congress has yet to act even though No Child Left Behind is four years overdue for renewal. Education reform requires elected officials from both sides of the aisle to come together. We can’t let partisan politics stand in the way.

One way or another, NCLB needs significant changes. Our states and schools deserve flexibility from its teach-to-the-test culture and one-size-fits-all accountability system.

Even as we work with states to offer flexibility from existing law, the Obama administration will support a bipartisan effort by Congress to create a law that supports a well-rounded education while holding schools, districts and states accountable for results.

We all need to work together so that 10 years from now, America’s children will have the sort of federal education law they so richly deserve — one that challenges them to achieve to high standards, and provides them with the highly effective teachers and principals who can prepare them for success in college and the workforce.

Arne Duncan is the U.S. Secretary of Education.

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The Politicization Of Educational Research | Edwize

The Politicization Of Educational Research | Edwize:

The Politicization Of Educational Research

by Leo Casey

Last Friday, an analysis of the “value-added” contributions of public school teachers authored by a trio of economists, Harvard’s Raj Chetty and John Friedman and Columbia’s Jonah Rockoff, was unveiled with great fanfare, receiving prominent coverage by both the New York Times and the PBS’ Newshour. By all accounts, this study (hereafter, CFR) is both substantial, employing a database unprecedented in such work by its sheer size, and innovative in a number of new design elements and statistical measures. It appears that the large urban school district which is the subject of the CFR analysis is New York City, both because of the sheer size of the database (New York City is more than twice the size of the next largest school district, Los Angeles) and because of the fact that one of the co-authors, Rockoff, has a long history of working closely with the New York City Department of Education in the development and implementation of its now discredited and abandoned version of value-added measures, the Teacher Data Reports.

Given the importance of such a study, the method and timing of its release to the media is of particular note. To

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The “$4700 value added” study: Why no peer review? « Fred Klonsky

The “$4700 value added” study: Why no peer review? « Fred Klonsky:

The “$4700 value added” study: Why no peer review?

by Fred Klonsky

We’ve been following the response to the report of a massive $2.5 million, 20 year study of teacher value added measures that appeared in Saturday’s NY Times.

The United Federation of Teachers leader Leo Casey asks why was the study released now, without the usual peer review?

Good question.

The choice of this particular moment, with the NYC DoE walking out of negotiations with the UFT over the teacher evaluation system for the 33 PLA schools, State Education Commissioner King’s disallowance of the teacher evaluation plans of all ten major urban school districts and Governor Cuomo’s

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School Tech Connect: You Need To Read

School Tech Connect: You Need To Read:

You Need To Read

by noreply@blogger.com (Tim)
I'm just going to come out and admit this. Last night, I got to page 404 in Stephen King's 11/22/63 and I was so scared that I walked around the flat to make sure all the windows were locked. I also spot-checked the readiness of my self-defense kit, if you know what I mean. What a magnificent, touching, and occasionally terrifying story this is!

Need a good book? Go get 11/22/63 from an indie dealer or from your local



Go Watch This

by noreply@blogger.com (Tim)
California whistle-blower tells the story from the inside.
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Shanker Blog » The Persistence Of Both Teacher Effects And Misinterpretations Of Research About Them

Shanker Blog » The Persistence Of Both Teacher Effects And Misinterpretations Of Research About Them:

The Persistence Of Both Teacher Effects And Misinterpretations Of Research About Them

by Matthew Di Carlo

In a new National Bureau of Economic Research working paper on teacher value-added, researchers Raj Chetty, John Friedman and Jonah Rockoff present results from their analysis of an incredibly detailed dataset linking teachers and students in one large urban school district. The data include students’ testing results between 1991 and 2009, as well as proxies for future student outcomes, mostly from tax records, including college attendance (whether they were reported to have paid tuition or received scholarships), childbearing (whether they claimed dependents) and eventual earnings (as reported on the returns). Needless to say, the actual analysis includes only those students for whom testing data were available, and who could be successfully linked with teachers (with the latter group of course limited to those teaching math or reading in grades 4-8).

The paper caused a remarkable stir last week, and for good reason: It’s one of the most dense, important and

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Race To Utopia: How A Public Servant Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Free Market | Dailycensored.com

Race To Utopia: How A Public Servant Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Free Market | Dailycensored.com:

Race To Utopia: How A Public Servant Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Free Market

by Adam Bessie

No Child Left Behind just celebrated it’s tenth anniversary: while educators, children and parents have generally loathed President George W. Bush’s signature legislation, and while studies have shown that it has failed to improve learning despite its immense cost, NCLB’s free-market policies – high-stakes standardized testing, and school closures for “losers” – are the undisputed status quo of school reform. President Barack Obama’s Race to the Top places even more faith in the magical power of the free market than NCLB: student scores on standardized tests continue to close schools, to pit states against one another for funding, and soon, pit teachers against one another for jobs. Even though the data shows that NCLB is a failure, our leaders – on both sides of the aisle – have invested too much time, money and pride in free-market reforms to admit that they have failed; and further, we’re all pretty certain that this wide scale experiment in deregulating public education will work out favorably someday (just as it did in the banking industry).

I mean, what’s the alternative to letting hedge fund managers, CEOs,

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Teen who killed bully to go free under ‘Stand Your Ground’ law - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

Teen who killed bully to go free under ‘Stand Your Ground’ law - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post:

Teen who killed bully to go free under ‘Stand Your Ground’ law

by Valerie Strauss

A judge has dropped a second-degree murder charge against a 15-year-old who fatally stabbed another teenager after he was attacked, citing a law in Florida that allows an individual to meet force with force if they fear for his/her life.

The “Stand Your Ground” law says that a person has no duty to retreat if attacked and can use even deadly force if they feel their life is in danger . At least 17 states have a version of this law, including Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas and Washington. If the boy had been in a state without the law, he might not have escaped prosecution.

Read full article >>
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A Letter to Marquette Elementary School Teachers from a Former Colleague | The Classroom Sooth

A Letter to Marquette Elementary School Teachers from a Former Colleague | The Classroom Sooth:

A Letter to Marquette Elementary School Teachers from a Former Colleague

by classroomsooth

Recently I visited a teacher friend of mine who used to work at Marquette Elementary School on the southwest side of Chicago. Upon hearing the news that Marquette was to be turned around by AUSL, she felt compelled to write the following letter.

Adam

On Behalf of my Former Colleagues at Marquette Elementary,

I am a 2001 graduate of CPS, and Marquette Elementary was my introduction to teaching in the Chicago Public School system. In my time there, the most inspiring and helpful people were my fellow teachers. CPS’s decision to turnaround this school belittles and dismisses the fact that the faculty there is a hardworking and dedicated group and ignores the true needs of the community.

While there, I was surrounded by colleagues who arrived early and left late. Colleagues who used their

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