Sunday, May 20, 2012

by Duke

When I see that America's business titans are making education policy while teachers are kicked to the curb, it makes me crazy. Partially because I'm angry that we're being excluded; partially because these guys shouldn't get tax gifts to amass the billions they spend to remake schools the way they want them.

But what really makes me nuts is that these "titans" shouldn't be allow to run anything until they clean up their own messes! Take James Crown of Chicago:

It remains unclear how much JPMorgan's risk committee knew about the trades that led to the massive loss, and whether a chief risk officer was reporting to the committee, Clayton said.
His group wants the bank to replace James Crown and Ellen Futter, who are members of the board's three-person risk policy committee, with individuals who have deeper experience in banking and financial regulation.
"Having somebody with regulatory experience - whether it's the SEC or the Fed or another regulator is very valuable," Clayton said.
According to JPMorgan's annual report, a chief risk officer oversees risk management at

A City Education: The Power of Staff-Parent Teams - Education - GOOD

A City Education: The Power of Staff-Parent Teams - Education - GOOD:

A City Education: The Power of Staff-Parent Teams

by Liz Warden

In our A City Education series, two City Year corps members share their experiences working as tutors and mentors in schools in hopes of closing the achievement gap and ending the dropout crisis.
Eddie, a sixth grader in my after-school tutoring group, has plenty of energy, but convincing him to focus it can be a challenge. My teammate Charlotte works in Eddie's English and math classroom. He disrupts the learning atmosphere by constantly arguing with the teacher and fighting with other students. He's frequently kicked out of class. And of course, when he’s not in class, he’s not learning.
Charlotte saw that Eddie needed positive interactions with adults at Markham, so in February she encouraged

Jersey Jazzman: Zuck's Billions To Newark Ain't Free

Jersey Jazzman: Zuck's Billions To Newark Ain't Free:

Zuck's Billions To Newark Ain't Free

by Duke

How did Mark Zuckerberg get so much money that he can pay $100 million to remake Newark's schools however he wants?

Tax gifts:

The right-wing has been lauding Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin for his decision to renounce his U.S. citizenship in order to avoid taxes. But he isn’t the only one who’s going to slash his tax bill in the wake of Facebook’s upcoming initial public offering: both CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the company itself will lower their tax bill for years to come.
While Zuckerberg will pay a hefty tax bill right off the bat if he follows through on his plan to sell $5 billion in Facebook stock options, as the New York Times noted, he may then never pay a dime of taxes on the rest of his Facebook wealth. “Instead, he can simply use his stock as collateral to borrow against his tremendous wealth and avoid all tax,” the Times reported.

Daily Kos: some thoughts to consider

Daily Kos: some thoughts to consider:

some thoughts to consider

by rss@dailykos.com (teacherken)

that perhaps have no connection with one another except that they are all rattling around inside my brain.

1. We do not have a constitutional right to vote. Yes, there are amendments that attempt to increase the ability of people to vote, but they are all phrased in the sense of that one cannot be denied the right to vote because of race, gender, age, or failure to pay a poll tax. But except for the provision of the 14th Amendment that says whatever proportion of male voters over 12 denied the right to vote for certain offices that state loses an equivalent proportion of its House representation (for how long not defined, nor has this ever been enforced), there is nothing constitutional that applies a penalty for denying someone the right to vote. This is one problem with addressing the recent voter id laws. It would be easier to push back were there a clear constitutional right to vote for any citizen over the age of 18 who has not explicitly lost the right to vote as the result of a felony conviction

2. We do not have a federal Constitutional right to a free public education. We have some federal statutes which entitle one to be educated in the least restrictive environment, but that presumes that there is a public education. Nor is there even in most states a clear definition of what a free public education should consist of.

3. We do not have a constitutional right to access to clean air or clean water, nor is there a clear responsibility to impose sufficient penalties or even application of costs for destruction of environment. If there were, how would mountaintop removal even be possible?
I have some more thoughts below the squiggle.

Yuck: US DOE Supports For-profit Entrepreneurs « Diane Ravitch's blog

Yuck: US DOE Supports For-profit Entrepreneurs « Diane Ravitch's blog:

Yuck: US DOE Supports For-profit Entrepreneurs

by dianerav

Yesterday I engaged in an unexpected exchange on Twitter with Justin Hamilton, who is press secretary to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
It started after I retweeted a blog by master-teacher Nancy Flanagan. Nancy’s blog took issue with a listing of the up-and-coming stars of American education, which focused heavily on the entrepreneurial sector and forgot teachers. Nancy listed some of the outspoken teachers who are emerging stars in the profession, like Julie Cavanaugh and Brian Jones, two New York City teachers who starred in “The Inconvenient Truth Behind ‘Waiting for Superman.’”
When I retweeted Nancy’s blog, I asked “Who will transform education: entrepreneurs or educators?”
I don’t have the exact sequence, but Jersey Jazzman (one of my favorite bloggers) recapitulated the tweets and blogs here: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2012/05/weasels-in-department-of-education.html?spref=tw.

Why College-for-All is a Sham

by dianerav

The corporate reformers like to say that everyone must go to college if they want to have good jobs in the future.
Now, let me be clear that I love education and I think everyone should get as much education as they want and should keep on getting better educated all their life. Thanks to the Internet, the means of self-education are easy and inexpensive.
But I don’t think that college-for-all is a reasonable goal. There are many young people who don’t want to go to college; they shouldn’t be forced by social pressure to do so. College changes if it is turned into a higher level of compulsory education. It becomes like high school or even junior high school if unwilling and unready students are pushed into college.
And the very claim that the jobs of the future require a college education is not true.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, most of the jobs that will open up in the next few years do not require a B.A. In fact, only about 25% do. The other 75% do not. They need on-the-job training.

http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2009/11/art5full.pdf
Look at Table 3 on page 88. Look specifically at the next to last column, “Total job openings due to growth and

Why Do We Spend So Much on Testing?

by dianerav

A parent in Texas wrote to say that she couldn’t understand why the state was paying Pearson $100 million a year while laying off teachers. She’s right. This is crazy. She pointed out that in addition to the direct cost of the state testing, schools and districts now had to pay people whose sole job is the care and feeding of the testing monster. One district is hiring a testing coordinator for each of its five high schools, More money diverted from the classroom. At the same time the cost of testing grows, the budget for public education shrinks.
She sent me this article from an Austin newspaper: http://www.kxan.com/dpp/news/local/austin/educators-parents-fight-testing-system. Sandy Kress, who was the architect of NCLB and is now a lobbyist for Pearson, strongly defended the testing system, saying that young people would be closed out of good jobs if they didn’t take all those tests.
Now, be it noted that this claim is utterly false. Students in independent schools (such as the one that Kress’ own children attend) do not take all those tests and they presumably will not be shut out of the good jobs in the future. http://jasonstanford.org/2012/05/the-lone-staar-rebellion/
Furthermore, there is no reason to assert that taking state tests prepares anyone for good jobs in the future.

Enter the New Dallas Superintendent « Diane Ravitch's blog

Enter the New Dallas Superintendent « Diane Ravitch's blog:

Enter the New Dallas Superintendent

by dianerav

"Road to Broad" Explore Superintendent Mike Miles'

'Destination 2020,' his ambitious plan to Jack Public Education

The new superintendent of the Dallas public schools, Mike Miles, is off to a rousing start. He is a military man, and he thinks in terms of organizational goals, the mission, the beliefs.

The story about Miles’ plan appears in the Dallas Morning News behind a paywall, so I can’t link to it.

But here are the essentials:

Like his predecessors, Miles has a long list of impressive goals.

He wants the district to embrace “a vision and a mission of raising academic achievement, improving instruction and not accepting excuses.” (What were they doing before Miles arrived?)

He said at a meeting of the school board:
“We cannot just post it and market it and put it in little brochures. We have to practice this,” said Miles, adding that he wants 80 percent of DISD employees to be “proficient” on those beliefs in a year. It is not clear how he

The mission of community colleges is under siege | Get Schooled

The mission of community colleges is under siege | Get Schooled:

The mission of community colleges is under siege

by Maureen Downey

Rick Diguette teaches English at a local college. He is also a great op-ed writer. Here is a new piece by him.

By Rick Diguette

At the large community college where I teach, we face challenges that go to the heart of our mission as a gateway institution of higher education. Although student needs have remained relatively constant over the years, today the business of effectively meeting those needs is fraught with uncertainty. That uncertainty is driven by the struggling U. S. economy and by the fact that higher education, like it or not, is a business. Community colleges across the country, not just here in Georgia, are under increasing pressure to show that capital expenditures will translate into tangible future benefits, or degrees awarded.
The educator in me knows that the number of degrees awarded tells only part of the story. Community colleges have always served a wide variety of educational needs. Our open enrollment policies have seen to that. Some argue, …

The Innovative Educator: Using Cell Phones to Increase Student Achievement and Engagement with Reading and Writing

The Innovative Educator: Using Cell Phones to Increase Student Achievement and Engagement with Reading and Writing:

Using Cell Phones to Increase Student Achievement and Engagement with Reading and Writing

by noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Nielsen)

Cell phones are a terrific tool to support student engagement and achievement in reading and writing. To follow are some ideas explaining how teachers are doing just that by using cell phones in the way they are most commonly used among youth -- for texting and group texting. We will also look at a newly emerging trend...using cell phones to write novels.

TEXTING
Our students are reading and writing more than ever. In the 21st century, this reading and writing often takes place through the lightening fast thumbs of teens. Although some parents and teachers complain that text messaging is ruining the language, research is showing that it is, in fact, a benefit to students phonemic awareness, spelling, and use of words (Yarmey, 2011; Plester & Wood, 2008, Malson & Tarica, 2011; Fresco,

hctiB G: Test Scores, Charters, Teachers and More Scores | The G Bitch Spot

hctiB G: Test Scores, Charters, Teachers and More Scores | The G Bitch Spot:

hctiB G: Test Scores, Charters, Teachers and More Scores

by G Bitch

What, Me Worry?

originally posted May 20, 2008

What did test scores prove about vouchers?

In New Orleans schools that have been taken over by the state in recent years, scores among fourth-graders on this spring’s Louisiana Educational Assessment Program test increased by 12 percentage points compared to last year. Scores for eighth-graders rose 4 percentage points.
It was a sign of long-awaited success for public education in New Orleans, and proof, said state Rep. Karen Carter Peterson, D-New Orleans, that this is not the time and New Orleans is not the place for the limited voucher program being pushed hard by Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration.
…
Still, when those scores were announced — at a New Orleans school surrounded by a tall fence and barbed wire — it was easy to see why some lawmakers are still pushing to provide some students with a state-funded escape: only 48 percent of fourth-graders and 36 percent of eighth-graders in the 59 schools passed the test
“They’re not where they need to be. And, as they’re not where they need to be, we should not

‘Is this really what education is about?’ - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

‘Is this really what education is about?’ - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post:

‘Is this really what education is about?’

by Valerie Strauss

his was written by Vicki Abeles, a parent of three and the director of the documentary, “Race to Nowhere” and Jo Boaler a professor of mathematics education at Stanford University. “Race to Nowhere” challenges common assumptions about how children are best educated.

By Vicki Abeles and Jo Boaler

Welcome to standardized testing season, when students nationwide are clearing their desks, sharpening their pencils and fighting feelings of anxiety to meet our schools’, states’, and federal government’s desire for a simple, quantifiable way to measure them. Is this really what education is about?

It shouldn’t be. Educators across America agree that high-stakes testinghas taken the place of meaningful

GO TO

National Resolution on High-Stakes Testing

Stop investing time, money in charter schools | The Greenville News | GreenvilleOnline.com

Stop investing time, money in charter schools | The Greenville News | GreenvilleOnline.com:

Stop investing time, money in charter schools

One pattern of failure in education reform is that political leadership and the public focus attention and resources to solutions while rarely asking what problems we are addressing or how those solutions address identified problems. The current and possibly increasing advocacy of charter schools is a perfect example of that flawed approach to improving our schools across the U.S. and in South Carolina.

Let’s start with two clarifications.

First, the overwhelming problems contributing to school quality in South Carolina are pockets of poverty across our state and school policies and practices mirroring and increasing social inequities for children once they enter many schools.

Children who live under the weight of poverty attend buildings in disrepair, sit in classrooms with inexperienced and unqualified or

Thousands march to oppose police repression in run-up to NATO summit | OccupyWallSt.org

Thousands march to oppose police repression in run-up to NATO summit | OccupyWallSt.org:

Thousands march to oppose police repression in run-up to NATO summit

by OccupyWallSt

PopoutThe following post is borrowed from Chicago Indymedia
Chicago saw thousands of people in the streets Saturday in the run-up to the beginning of the NATO summit. with the afternoon's boisterous but peaceful protest marches marred by sweeping police violence.
Protests began in the morning, when people gathered at the Irving Park Brown Line public transit stop to don hospital gowns and canvas the local neighborhood, then assembled at noon for the “Healthcare not Warfare!” action. That protest marched on the house of mayor Rahm Emanuel to protest his closure of half of the city’s

An Open Letter to Our Comrades

by OccupyWallSt

from 3 anonymous OWS Occupiers in Chicago:

COMMUNIQUÉ #246

On the eve of the feast of the cabal of hypocrites, otherwise referred to as the 2012 NATO Summit, the people of Chicago have undergone a grave injustice at the hands of the violent police state. The Chicago Police's actions today, May 19th, were a brutally violent attack on our bodies and on our rights. An absurdly large police force was deployed in order to intimidate and provoke a peaceable assembly, and resulted in unbridled, militaristic attacks on activists demonstrating against NATO, inflicting several serious injuries - including broken noses, bloodied eyes, and a particularly sickening incident in which a dedicated comrade was belligerently run down by a police van.
We vociferously condemn these unacceptable and cowardly attacks, and know that the people are beginning to awaken from the falsified dream of liberty in a nation thats find itself in a newly authoritarian police state which crushes any dissent and defends the war machines of internatonal violence and global capitalism, instead of the human beings it feigns to represent. Yet we will not be so easily fooled by these tactics. The actions by the Chicago Police Department were carried out tonight with the calculated intent of provoking and generating fear within our collective into a reactionary state. This is a police tactic that is used to distract our focus and to spiral us into downwardness and negativity. We must resist these feelings, for we lose our autonomy in reacting to the script they have written for us, and without steadfast descipline in the face of the arm of state repression. We have to be serious and disciplined in order to not fall into this trap. It is EXACTLY what they want from us. We know that this is a panicked attempt to postemptively justify to the people the astronomical amount of our public resources that have been wasted on the exorbitant number of police on the streets, the unlawful and intrusive surveillance & unjustifiable home raids, and the Orwellian fear being propagated by the puppet corporate media. Our organization will not be provoked into a state of disorganized rage, for we are well aware that is exactly as they wish to manipulate us. It is no better, nay, it is worse to fall into their cheap and predictable trap than it is to subserviently subjugate ourselves to obeying the orders of authority.
This national convergence represents an incredible and unique opportunity to bring together a diverse spectrum of activists in a unified front of resistance unlike any other seen in over a decade. Tomorrow, we enter the stage with a righteous fire in our hearts at the injustice done to us and our comrades on these streets just a day before. Yet we will not be overriden with heightened emotions that cloud our judgement. We recognize this attempt at coercion as yet another manifestation of systemic oppression, and remain autonomous individuals who will not be ordered around, explictly or implicitly. Instead, we channel our anger, our pain, our compassion, our despair, and our passion for a better world without this oppression into our messaging and our actions.
Comrades. Let us take a deep, deep breath together. Let's heal together, and then work together to make tactical decisions that are arrived at out of truly free and autonomous choice, not dictated by authority. Be safe, look out for one another, organize in small, accountable groups of affinity and trust, Stay calm, and remember why we traveled to Chicago - to stand in the face of a war machine that acts recklessly beyond transparency and accountability to the people it affects and claims to represent - and to say we want a world free of war and oppression.
Solidarity forever.
-Anonymous
#OCCUPYWALLSTREET
#NONATO
#NATOSOLIDARITY
#NATO3

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Reflections on Teaching » Blog Archive » David Coleman, David Coleman, who art thou?

Reflections on Teaching » Blog Archive » David Coleman, David Coleman, who art thou?:

David Coleman, David Coleman, who art thou?

by alicemercer

Common Core confusion continues this week as one of my posts on the subject, got picked up by education reporter Dana Goldstein on her blog. Her post focused on criticism that Common Core is dumping fiction reading, and narrative writing from the curriculum. Since I’m in a state with standards that already emphasize reading of expository/informational text starting in grade 4, that’s not so much of a leap, but she did pick up my critique on 2nd grade writing being developmentally inappropriate.
Also in that post was news that David Coleman, the architect of Common Core ELA, is going to become

Superheros, Superegos, and Student Discipline | Connected Principals

Superheros, Superegos, and Student Discipline | Connected Principals:

Superheros, Superegos, and Student Discipline

by jdelp

cc flickr photo by brettjordan

How we treat our best students shows our aspirations; how we treat our most challenging students shows our values. ~ Mendler and Curwin

This past Friday, an incident occurred at school that had me seeing red. While supervising in the cafeteria during the lunch period, I was asked by our one of our cafeteria staff members to address a group of boys who had been leaving trash on their table, and arguing with one of our lunchroom monitors when asked to clean up

Up to 13 LAUSD continuation schools may be closed as part of cost-cutting move - LA Daily News

Up to 13 LAUSD continuation schools may be closed as part of cost-cutting move - LA Daily News:

Up to 13 LAUSD continuation schools may be closed as part of cost-cutting move

By Barbara Jones, Staff Writer

Posted: 05/19/2012 06:42:17 PM PDT

Updated: 05/19/2012 07:35:08 PM PDT

Students and faculty outside Earhart Continuation High School in North Hollywood. Earhart is among 13 continuation schools in LAUSD targeted for closure because of the budget crisis. (Hans Gutknecht / Staff Photographer)

Signs outside Earhart Continuation High School in North Hollywood. Earhart is among 13 continuation schools in LAUSD targeted for closure because of the budget crisis. (Hans Gutknecht / Staff Photographer)

More than one-fourth of Los Angeles Unified's continuation high schools may be shuttered next year as a cost-cutting move, shrinking a program seen as a last resort for students at risk of dropping out.
Continuation schools on the campuses of North Hollywood High and Taft High in Woodland Hills are among 13 that would be closed under a plan to save the district $6.5 million.
Leonis Continuation High in Woodland Hills is also on the list, although its anchor campus, El Camino Real Charter, has asked the school board to let it incorporate the intervention program, which would save it from elimination.
Officials say they can keep all of the conti

OCCUPY EDUCATION - “It is easier to buy a gun than my education!”

OCCUPY EDUCATION - “It is easier to buy a gun than my education!”:

“It is easier to buy a gun than my education!”

Academica: Florida’s richest charter school management firm - Cashing In On Kids - MiamiHerald.com

Academica: Florida’s richest charter school management firm - Cashing In On Kids - MiamiHerald.com:

Academica: Florida’s richest charter school management firm

Academica has become Florida’s largest and richest charter-school management company, running more than 60 schools just in Miami-Dade and Broward counties.

Fernando Zulueta, president of Academica, gets a drink at the bar in Cain at The Cove, Friday, September 16, 2011, an exclusive beach club in the Bahamas' Atlantis resort. It was at The Cove that Academica held a leadership retreat for principals of several charter schools in Miami-Dade and Broward counties. STAFF PHOTO

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Making Schools Work

By DAVID L. KIRP

Published: May 19, 2012 Comment

AMID the ceaseless and cacophonous debates about how to close the achievement gap, we’ve turned away from one tool that has been shown to work: school desegregation. That strategy, ushered in by the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, has been unceremoniously ushered out, an artifact in the museum of failed social experiments. The Supreme Court’s ruling that racially segregated schools were “inherently unequal” shook up the nation like no other decision of the 20th century. Civil rights advocates, who for years had been patiently laying the constitutional groundwork, cheered to the rafters, while segregationists mourned “Black Monday” and vowed “massive resistance.” But as the anniversary was observed this past week on May 17, it was hard not to notice that desegregation is effectively dead. In fact, we have been giving up on desegregation for a long time. In 1974, the Supreme

Jersey Jazzman: Weasels In the Department of Education

Jersey Jazzman: Weasels In the Department of Education:

Weasels In the Department of Education

by Duke

Weasel words are flying out of the Obama/Duncan Department of Education tonight. Here's the story:

First, Diane Ravitch tweeted the most important question right now in the education world:

Who will transform education: entrepreneurs or educators? goo.gl/srER4

Which links to the piece by Nancy Flanagan which, again, asks this most important question in our current education debate:

So--Sara Mead is again highlighting 17 "up and coming" edu-preneurs who will "lead the transformation of education in this country in the coming generation," in her Policy Notebook blog. Mead says she:
...built this list by asking for recommendations from people I respect in the education field, including my Bellwether education colleagues, leaders of education reform and policy organizations, writers and analysts, and, most importantly, last year's list of Next Generation Leaders.
Her list includes many "founders" and "executives" of charter schools, non-profits created to demean collective bargaining and teachers' control over their own profession, rising

Latest News and Comment from Education

Sunday, May 20, 2012

"Road to Broad" Explore Superintendent Mike Miles'

'Destination 2020,' his ambitious plan to Jack Public Education

Stop investing time, money in charter schools

COMMUNIQUÉ #246

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Up to 13 LAUSD continuation schools may be closed as part of cost-cutting move

Academica: Florida’s richest charter school management firm

Academica has become Florida’s largest and richest charter-school management company, running more than 60 schools just in Miami-Dade and Broward counties.

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Making Schools Work

By DAVID L. KIRP

Published: May 19, 2012 Comment