Thursday, May 10, 2012

Big Education Ape: 5-10-12 AM It’s Not Whether You Win or Lose, But How You Spin the News…EDition

Big Education Ape: PARENTS CAN!:
Big Education Ape: PARENTS CAN!

Published by Coopmike48 – 6 news spotters today

Governor, legislative leaders agree on education reforms

ctmirror.org - Gov. Dannel P. Malloy declared victory Monday night in his long, contentious push for education reforms, announcing a compromise agreement at a televised press conference with legislative leaders w...
arneduncan

George W. Bush Presidential Center

bushcenter.com - Tuesday, May 8th, 2012 Bush Institute Survey Suggests Education Policy is Out of Sync with Public Views DALLAS—Most Americans believe the nation does not receive a good return on its investment in ...
DianeRavitch

Shanker Blog » The Weighting Game

shankerblog.org - A while back, I noted that states and districts should exercise caution in assigning weights (importance) to the components of their teacher evaluation systems before they know what the other compo...
DianeRavitch

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EducationSee all

Privatizing Learning

nytimes.com - To the Editor: Re “A Very Pricey Pineapple,” by Gail Collins (column, April 28): We disagree fundamentally with the column’s conception of the privatization of education. Pu...
mikeklonsky

SF teachers set for strike vote amid budget woes

sfgate.com - San Francisco teachers are set for a strike vote this week over the district's demands to cut $30 million from teachers' salaries and benefits over the next two years. The union wants a 2 percent r...
mikeklonsky

SocietySee all

Save Cato

cato.org - Cato Vice President Gene Healy responded recently to the issue of board independence, which figured heavily in a David Koch Statement: Mr. Koch argues that leaving Cato’s current board in place and...
DianeRavitch

PoliticsSee all

RahmPublican

michaelklonsky.blogspot.com - What Rahm must be thinking: Hey, this is great. It's like I'm back in the White House -- embracing the GOP, attacking teachers unions, their pensions and health care, closing mental health clinics,...
mikeklonsky

Joseph Stiglitz: The 99 Percent Wakes Up

thedailybeast.com - Darrell Willis wears a "99%" button and an American flag at the corner of LaSalle and Jackson during an Occupy Chicago protest Monday, Oct. 3, 2011, in Chicago. "Occupy Chicago" protests started Mo...
mikeklonsky

Moderate Republicans Fall Away in the Senate

fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com - I wrote earlier about the electoral implications of the defeat of longtime Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana in the Republican primary on Tuesday. It should make the seat much more competitive an...
fklonsky

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I Sure Do Feel Appreciated

nyceducator.com - Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!  I know it's Teacher Appreciation Week because I got this lovely e-mail from State Education Commissioner John B. King, Jr. informing me, among other things, about ...
leoniehaimson

Create A Comic With “Rage Maker”

larryferlazzo.edublogs.org - Put Your Rage Into a Cartoon and Exit Laughing is a New York Times article tonight about the Web genre of “rage comics” — people using easy online tools to vent about irritating incidents they expe...
coopmike48

The Redesign - Dana Goldstein

danagoldstein.net - As I move into book-writing mode, I'm going to have much less time to blog, especially because I want to continue to contribute to Slate and The Nation. So I've redesigned the site so the homepage ...
coopmike48

BusinessSee all

Office of the New York City Comptroller John C. Liu

comptroller.nyc.gov - PR12-05-052 Contact: Stephanie Hoo, (212) 669-3747 May 9, 2012 COMPTROLLER LIU UNVEILS INFRASTRUCTURE PLAN TO CREATE 15,000 JOBS City Can Spur Economic Growth and Realize Long-Term Savings by Accel...
leoniehaimson

K12: Investor Relations: Investor Overview

investors.k12.com - WebcastQ3 2012 K12 Inc. Earnings Conference Call (Replay)05/08/12 at 9:00 a.m. ETClick here to see the K12 Virtual Academies Academic Performance Trends (April 9, 2012)Click here to see the K12 Inv...
leoniehaimson

HealthSee all

Retired couples may need $240,000 for health care

northjersey.com - BOSTON (AP) - Couples retiring this year can expect their medical bills throughout retirement to cost 4 percent more than those who retired a year ago, according to an annual projection released We...
coopmike48

Startup from UC Davis gains private funding - Business

sacbee.com - The University of California, Davis, College of Engineering's fledgling high-tech business incubator, the Engineering Translational Technology Center, has its first "graduate."Dysonics, a startup b...
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Two dinners. « Fred Klonsky

Two dinners. « Fred Klonsky:


Two dinners.

by Fred Klonsky


Hackney’s onion loaf.
There are two retirement dinners tonight after school.
My district is hosting one.
My Region of the IEA is holding the other.
The Region dinner is at a burger place called Hackney’s. Union activists from all the Region’s locals will be there. And retirees. Each Local President will get up and say a few words about folks who have for the love of their profession committed hours of their time  negotiating contracts, representing members in disputes with administration, sitting on endless committees, going to conferences and Representative Assemblies and doing their day job.
You know. Teaching.
The District dinner will be at the country club. Retiring teachers, administrators para-professionals and non-certified staff will be there.
As an aside, the Park Ridge Country Club was originally designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. But several decades 
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Yong Zhao » Blog Archive » What’s Still Missing in American Education and How to Out-educate China?

Yong Zhao » Blog Archive » What’s Still Missing in American Education and How to Out-educate China?:


What’s Still Missing in American Education and How to Out-educate China?

by YongZhao


America has almost caught up with China, and actually in some areas surpassed it. Thanks to No Child Left Behind, America can now claim to have even more frequent high stakes standardized tests than China. It can also be proud to be more serious than China about the test results because it uses test scores to break up schools, fire school leaders, and publicly humiliate teachers, while China does not have the guts to do any of that. China only gives those schools and teachers with high test scoring students some extra money. America has also successfully reduced time on nonsense school activities such as music, arts, sports, science, social studies, lunch time, and field trips, something it has wanted to do since the 1950s when surpassing the former Soviet Union was the aspiration. And the silly Chinese are working hard to push those nonsense activities into schools.
Through the Common Core Standards Initiative, America will soon claim another major victory over China. It 
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First pass at school inspections | Thoughts on Public Education

First pass at school inspections | Thoughts on Public Education:


First pass at school inspections

State Board considers some alternatives
Posted on 5/10/12 • Categorized as State Board of Education
By John Fensterwald - Educated Guess


The State Board of Education on Wednesday waded into what’s expected to be a yearlong process of revising the state’s standardized-test-heavy school accountability system. First up: discussing whether to reshape an existing tool, the School Accountability Report Card, or SARC, an annual data dump that every school collects and is supposed to post online, and whether to consider adding a new dimension – school inspections.
Talk of changing the state’s accountability system has gained currency amid recognition that narrow measures under the state’s Academic Performance Index, combined with federal accountability requirements, have skewed priorities and undervalued much of wh
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The ironies of Teacher Appreciation Week - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

The ironies of Teacher Appreciation Week - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post:



Student video: How high-stakes tests affect kids

Valerie Strauss at The Answer Sheet - 2 hours ago
There is one voice rarely heard in the screaming debate about the role ofhigh-stakes tests in education: that of students. Though the big focus today in education is on evaluating teachers and whether student standardized test results should be a part of educator assessment (they shouldn’t), there is no group more affected by high stakes on these exams than the people who have to take them. Results from a single test can determine whether a student moves up a grade or graduates from high school. Read full article >> [image: Add to Facebook] [image: Add to Twitter] [image: Add to R... more »

The ironies of Teacher Appreciation Week

Valerie Strauss at The Answer Sheet - 2 hours ago
Last Friday, the Friday before the start of Teacher Appreciation Week and two business days before National Teacher Day, D.C. Public Schools officialssent out noticesto 333 teachers saying that their jobs had effectively been eliminated. This should be considered better form than last year, when they sent out “excessing” notices on the last day of Teacher Appreciation Week. Read full article >> [image: Add to Facebook] [image: Add to Twitter] [image: Add to Reddit] [image: Add to StumbleUpon]

How high-stakes assessments affect doctors (and the lesson for teachers)

Valerie Strauss at The Answer Sheet - 3 hours ago
This *was written by Larry Cuban, a former high school social studies teacher (14 years, including seven at Cardozo and Roosevelt high schools in the District), district superintendent (seven years in Arlington, VA) and professor emeritus of education at Stanford University, where he has taught for more than 20 years. His latest book is “As Good As It Gets: What School Reform Brought to Austin.” This appeared on his blog.* Read full article >> [image: Add to Facebook] [image: Add to Twitter] [image: Add to Reddit] [image: Add to StumbleUpon]

Teacher evaluation: What it should look like

Valerie Strauss at The Answer Sheet - 1 day ago
A new report from Stanford University researcher Linda Darling-Hammond details what the components of a comprehensive teacher evaluation system should look like at a time when such assessments have become one of the most contentious debates in education today. Read full article >> [image: Add to Facebook] [image: Add to Twitter] [image: Add to Reddit] [image: Add to StumbleUpon]
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Common Core [sic] Standards (Susan Ohanian Speaks Out)

Common Core [sic] Standards (Susan Ohanian Speaks Out):


    K-12 Teaching: A Service Industry Ohanian Comment: P. L. Thomas hits the nail on the head. Who's to blame for turning teaching in to a service industry? A whole lot of teachers and people organizing teachers need to look in the mirror. Teachers don't seem to realize it yet, but the Common Core State [sic] Standards will eat them alive.  by P. L. Thomas 
    At The New Republic, Making the Grade poses this about the difference between college professors (notice that term "professor," as in "one who professes") and K-12 teachers: 
    "The vast majority of states have long granted public school teachers tenure. The way it works is simple: After a certain number of years, teachers qualify—'virtually automatically' in most states, according to the National Council on Teacher Quality--for a form of job protection that makes it extremely difficult to fire them for the rest of their careers. 
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Local Control of Charter Schools is Over in Florida | Scathing Purple Musings

Local Control of Charter Schools is Over in Florida | Scathing Purple Musings:


Local Control of Charter Schools is Over in Florida

by Bob Sikes


After a February decision to overrule local school boards on charter school rejections, Florida State Board of Eduction Member Kathleen Shannon said that she “hoped” people were getting the impression that the Board was showing favoritism for charter school. And chance of that ended yesterday when Shannon’s Board overruled five districts in their rejection of charter schools. From Dave Weber in the Orlando Sentinel:
The Florida State Board of Education on Wednesday overruled the decisions of local school boards in deciding that five charter schools rejected by Central Florida districts should be allowed to open.
The decisions were a rebuff for officials in Orange, Seminole, Volusia, Polk and Brevard counties, who had said the charters, proposed to open in the fall, fell short of their standards.
During an appeals hearing in Tampa, the state board also sided with two charters in Broward 
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Videos for the Classroom: Becoming American-The Immigrant Experience | Mr. D's Neighborhood

Videos for the Classroom: Becoming American-The Immigrant Experience | Mr. D's Neighborhood:


Videos for the Classroom: Becoming American-The Immigrant Experience

by ldorazio1
Immigration and the immigrant experience is a key element of the American experience.
Yet to get a real look at what it means to be an immigrant, it helps to look past the steerage section, the Statue of Liberty and a flood of Jacob Riis photographs.
Becoming American: The Immigrant Experience is a documentary created by the Merage Foundation for the 


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Charters make their play - Bites - Opinions - May 10, 2012 - Sacramento News & Review

Charters make their play - Bites - Opinions - May 10, 2012 - Sacramento News & Review:


Charters make their play

Charter Schools - Dividing Communities since 1991


By  
cosmog@newsreview.com


This article was published on .

The Sacramento County Office of Education isn’t in the news all that much. But there have been a run of stories in The Sacramento Bee lately setting the stage for SCOE board elections in June.
Basically, Team Scoopy has framed the election as a contest between the well-meaning charter-school operators—Margaret Fortune in particular—and bloated union stooges who criticize charter schools.
That’s trouble for Harold Fong, the only SCOE board member who opposed the Fortune Schools application last year. Margaret Fortune has reported giving $1,100 to Fong’s challenger,Christina Shipman. The Bee also just endorsed a slate of charter supporters, including Shipman.
“They basically want to take out the person who opposed the Fortune charter. They want to send a message,” Fong told Bites.
He opposed it partly because the Fortune charter application was explicitly about closing the “achievement gap” for black students. A worthy goal, to be sure. But given that other Fortune schools are somewhere around 80 percent African-American, “I had serious reservations that 
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Caring for Every Child's Mental Health — Whole Child Education

Caring for Every Child's Mental Health — Whole Child Education:


Klea Scharberg

Caring for Every Child’s Mental Health

May 9, 2012 by Klea Scharberg
National Children's Mental Health Awareness Day, May 9, 2012
What does it take for children to be mentally healthy? Being mentally healthy is not just about emotional and behavioral difficulties. It's also about being mentally strong and resilient and having the skills and supports to deal with stressful issues when they arise. Today is National Children's Mental Health Awareness Day, established and promoted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). The Awareness Day national event complements activities occurring across the country, such as community events, youth rallies, social media campaigns, and activities with children that promote community conversations about the importance of 
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