Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Change.Org dumps Rhee, Edelman

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Change.Org dumps Rhee, Edelman:

Change.Org dumps Rhee, Edelman

by Mike Klonsky

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 Here's a video about the petition drive that led to Change.org dumping Rhee & Edelman

In response to an avalanche of protest, Change.Org, a progressive online website that enables activist groups to 

Schools Matter: Ohanian on the Rotted Common Core and the Marginalizing of Imagination

Schools Matter: Ohanian on the Rotted Common Core and the Marginalizing of Imagination:

Ohanian on the Rotted Common Core and the Marginalizing of Imagination

by Jim Horn

by Susan Ohanian, posted at Daily Censored: 

In 20002, Business Week Revealed Why Common Core Disdains Fiction

And the little very very very very very very very old man smiled, and looking at the faerie he said: ‘Why?’ —e. e. cummings, The Old Man Who Said Why

This is the kind of writing primary graders savor. I speak from first-hand, on-the-spot observation here. Of course, teacher experience, knowledge, and intuition count for nothing. Education policy makers are deaf to my expertise. Unions are deaf to my expertise. NCTE, my professional organization for decades, is deaf to my expertise.

Will Weatherford, Like Levesque Ignores Crippling Remediation Rates in FCAT Spin | Scathing Purple Musings

Will Weatherford, Like Levesque Ignores Crippling Remediation Rates in FCAT Spin | Scathing Purple Musings:

Will Weatherford, Like Levesque Ignores Crippling Remediation Rates in FCAT Spin

by Bob Sikes

Defense of FCAT and Jeb Bush’s high-states test regime has been limited to his Gang of Four in policy wonk Patricia Levesque, former Bush ed commissioner John Winn, former Bush chief of staff and current BOE chair Kathleen Shanahan and embattled current education commissioner Gerard Robinson. Realizing they needed someone else, Florida speaker-in-waiting Will Weatherford was recruited.  It’s easy to dispatch with Weatherford’s opinion piece that will be published in tomorrow’s Tampa Bay Times. The speaker-designate used identical talking points to those which Patricia Levesque used last week. Weatherford, like Levesque painted FCAT as virtuous for  “Florida’s students are achieving more than ever before.”
Both Levesque and Robinson are touting improved graduation rates-particularly among African-American and Hispanic students. It’s beyond me what FCAT has to do with that as these kids last took FCAT two years ago. No word on how many among these sub-groups – or any group for that matter – graduated with the assistance of 

Missouri Education Watchdog: School Boards Aren't Getting The Message

Missouri Education Watchdog: School Boards Aren't Getting The Message:

School Boards Aren't Getting The Message

by Anngie

 Cool Hand Luke

There seems to be an epidemic of communications breakdown between government and the people. It goes all the way to the President, who gave over 100 speeches in which he tried to get the public to see the beauty of the Healthcare bill.  He was largely unsuccessful. It was seen in the state likes Arizona where the immigration law SB 1070 was supported by the majority of the AZ population, but is being prosecuted by the Justice Department.  It can even be found at the local school board level where in Rockwood, for instance, the public did 

Why Do Doctors Make Excuses? « Diane Ravitch's blog

Why Do Doctors Make Excuses? « Diane Ravitch's blog:

Why Do Doctors Make Excuses?

by dianerav

A reader sent in a comment about holding teachers accountable for test scores.
He attended a “question and answer” luncheon hosted by the Lafayette, Louisiana, Chamber of Commerce, where Governor Bobby Jindal was the speaker. Jindal came late, spoke fast, and left without answering any questions.
The reader, possibly the only educator in the audience, turned to the CEO of a hospital sitting next to him and asked “if he ever pondered posting his hospital’s mortality rate outside its door.” The reader was “a little surprised at how firmly his ‘no’ response was—-it was as if I asked him to jump off of a bridge.   I was merely trying to make a comparison to cohort grad rates and letter grading systems in our state to the business community.” The reader concluded that “accountability as educators know it will  never be applied to any other type of profession much less within the business community despite their unwavering support of accountability for 

Debating Cuomo Plan for Teacher Ratings « Diane Ravitch's blog

Debating Cuomo Plan for Teacher Ratings « Diane Ravitch's blog:

Debating Cuomo Plan for Teacher Ratings

by dianerav

Governor Andrew Cuomo has come up with a compromise on the issue of releasing teacher data rankings. He wants only parents to see the rankings and data reports for their children’s teachers, but to make public the data for individual classes and schools. This is a step in the right direction, but it doesn’t go far enough.
It doesn’t satisfy the tabloids, who want every teacher’s name and ranking to be published online and in print. Like Mayor Bloomberg, they believe that the rankings are an accurate reflection of teacher quality and should be freely displayed, perhaps on posters in the postoffice.
It doesn’t satisfy me either because I know based on research and experience that the rankings are inaccurate, unstable and will sully the reputation of good teachers. How are parents helped by seeing inaccurate ratings? How are teachers helped to improve, as Bill Gates pointed out in an article in the New York Times earlier this

The Perils of Teaching in California

dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 hour ago

A reader writes from California about the churn and instability caused by the toxic combination of annual budget cuts and an open door for unregulated charters. I met a teacher in Los Angeles recently who told me he had been “pink slipped” six years in a row, called back each time, then pink-slipped again. What [...]

Is Tennessee the Worst State?

dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 hour ago

A reader in Tennessee nominates his state as the worst in the nation in terms of implementing the usual stale ideas to “reform” the schools. How could it not be in contention to win the race to the bottom when it was one of the first states (Delaware was the other) to win the Race [...]

Will North Carolina Say No to K12?

dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 2 hours ago

A majority of school boards in North Carolina are opposing the opening of a K12 online charter school. They understand that the North Carolina Virtual Academy will drain millions of dollars from the budgets of the state’s public schools. K12, the nation’s largest for-profit online charter corporation, persuaded one school board to sponsor its operation [...]

Federal Study: Charters and Special Education

dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 2 hours ago

The General Accounting Office, which is the federal government’s watchdog agency, just issued a report concluding that charter schools are failing to enroll a fair share of students with disabilities. Advocates of students with special needs have complained about this for the past few years, and it is now confirmed. The report showed that special-education [...]

Are You For Sale?

dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 2 hours ago

The New York Times had an informative but frankly alarming article about the research that maps out every fact about each of us. The article is called “You For Sale: A Data Giant is mapping, and sharing, the consumer genome.” The article describes the vast “data-mining” business that collects, stores, and sells about 1,500 data [...]

How Are Police and Teachers Alike These Days?

dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 2 hours ago

Read this article, which documents how data-driven policing has caused police to report statistics wrongly, classify crimes as more or less serious depending on the quota needed to fill, and has created constructs of “productivity” that warp the goals of policing. What is the primary goal of policing? To keep our communities safe and crime-free. [...]

Change.Org Drops Rhee and Edelman

dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 2 hours ago

In an earlier post, I described how Michelle Rhee’s Students First collects “members” whenever anyone unwittingly signs a petition at change.org for a “kittens and puppies” cause or when they agree that they respect teachers. This is deceptive advertising. It turns out that Jonah Edelman’s Stand for Children also benefited by misleading people who signed [...]

Test Scores or Creativity?

dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 3 hours ago

An earlier post considered whether standardized tests were necessary or useful in the arts. Several arts teachers responded to say that they are not only NOT necessary and NOT useful, but they are actually harmful. They miss the point of arts education and they distort instruction. I agree. This comment makes the case even stronger. [...]

Wait, What? - Working to educate, persuade and mobilize through "perceptive and acerbic" observations about Connecticut Government and Politics

Wait, What? - Working to educate, persuade and mobilize through "perceptive and acerbic" observations about Connecticut Government and Politics:

“Education Reformers” spend over $2.6 million lobbying for Malloy’s “Education Reform” bill

by jonpelto

With the end of the 2012 Legislative Session, came the final lobbying reports from the corporate-funded “Education Reform” groups.  From January through May 2012, Michelle Rhee, Patrick Riccards and the various corporate executives pushing Malloy’s education plan spent over $2.6 million in Connecticut.

Overall, the corporate reformers outspent those supporting public education by at least two to one.

Although Connecticut law requires organizations to reveal how much money they spent on lobbying, they do not have to identify where the funds came from.  The reports indicate that upwards towards $1 million or more came from out-of-state “reform” groups.

It was a big year for Michelle Rhee and the other the anti-teacher, anti-union “education reform” advocates across the country.  After spending hundreds of millions on lobbying, these groups were able to persuade tea-bag and conservative Republican governors and 

Smart policy decisions can only result from involving teachers | Thoughts on Public Education

Smart policy decisions can only result from involving teachers | Thoughts on Public Education:

Smart policy decisions can only result from involving teachers - by Liam Goldrick

by Liam Goldrick

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Posted on 6/20/12 • Categorized as Evaluations, Teacher Development

By Liam Goldrick

As someone who engages in education policy advocacy and development for a living, it’s good to know opportunities abound for me and fellow policymakers to hear the voices of America’s teachers and to apply their perspective in crafting policy solutions to educationalchallenges. Apart from the traditional participation of teachers unions (American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association), a number of national and state-based initiatives (Accomplished California Teachers, Teach Plus, VIVA Project) have launched to inject the voices of teachers into education policy discussions.

But is anyone listening?

Policymakers attending the annual summit of the State Consortium on Educator 

Assembly panel pursues college success - by Kathryn Baron

by Kathryn Baron

Retiring Community College Chancellor Jack Scott watched his signature initiative move closer to becoming law. The Assembly Higher Education Committee yesterday unanimously passed SB 1456, the Student Success Act of 2012. The bill would implement two of the 22 recommendations developed by the Student Success Task Force, a panel of educators, policymakers, students, and researchers that [...]

Daily Kos: A few thoughts on Obama and Immigration

Daily Kos: A few thoughts on Obama and Immigration:

A few thoughts on Obama and Immigration

by rss@dailykos.com (teacherken)

Republicans are howling that what the President did was political.  Hell, anything a President does is political, because he is the nation's chief politicians.
But let's be clear about something.
The approximately 800,000 young people who will have a somewhat regularized status under this executive order will not be able to vote - they not only are not citizens, they are not under this plan yet legal residents.  But they are allowed to have an ongoing status that allows them to come out of the shadows.  There is no DIRECT political gain from them for the President.
Their families are, by definition, undocumented aliens.  The adults who brought them here have not had their status changed.  There is no DIRECT political gain from them for the President, since they cannot vote.
There is real gain in other ways - more students who can legally attend college; more talented young people who gain be productive members of the economy, earning real wages from which social security and medicare are 

Seattle Schools Community Forum: The Tide Keeps Turning

Seattle Schools Community Forum: The Tide Keeps Turning:

The Tide Keeps Turning

by Melissa Westbrook

Remember how it has been reported that StudentsFirst, Michelle Rhee's organization, had petitions atChange.org that if you signed them, made you a member of StudentsFirst?  Well, I guess Change.org had a change of heart because both StudentsFirst and Stand for Children have been booted out.  

The story at the Huffington Post is far more nuanced.

Change.org leaders, for their part, said they think some of the outrage resulted from a misunderstanding of the company's goal, which is not to spread American-style progressive values around the globe, but rather to empower as many people as possible under the theory that the world will be better as a result. 

Why were they booted?

The move comes after intense pressure from the labor movement and other progressive allies, who accused the for-profit company of betraying its liberal roots by partnering with Rhee, the former head of Washington, D.C., 

Goading Works!

by Melissa Westbrook

Just checking in over at the Yes on 1240 website and they finally(!) have the text of the initiative up.

Still, you have to wonder - if they want you to sign the petition for it and vote for it, why wouldn't it have been there in the first place?

They now have about $750k in their coffers from:

• Democrats for Education Reform WA PAC (that would be contributors from Leslie Hanauer, Steve 

NYC Educator: Tough Days for Teachers

NYC Educator: Tough Days for Teachers:

Tough Days for Teachers

by NYC Educator

Open up any paper and look at the madness that's infected our nation. In Chicago, the government has reneged on an agreement to give teachers a 4% pay increase. Instead, they want to raise their number of hours worked, give them 2% the first year of a five-year contract, and have them hope for the best for the next four years. Now, the CTU has overwhelmingly authorized a strike.

That doesn't mean there will be a strike, of course. If Chicago wants to work out something reasonable, it can be averted. Here in NYC, we've been without a raise for four years. All non-educators got raises in excess of 8% for the 2008-2010 round of pattern bargaining, without givebacks. So now, we are headed to fact-finding at PERB, which brought us, among other things, the 2005 contract.

What creative solutions will PERB recommend? Since other unions got a raise giving up nothing, is that suitable for us? It should be, actually, since we had to offer massive givebacks to supersede the pattern in the past. Also, PERB has declared the pattern pretty much sacrosanct. The question is, does that apply when the pattern is 

Evaluating Teachers Using Student Test Scores: IMPACT (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Evaluating Teachers Using Student Test Scores: IMPACT (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Evaluating Teachers Using Student Test Scores: IMPACT (Part 2)

by larrycuban

Since 2009, a new system of teacher evaluation has been put into practice in Washington, D.C. called IMPACT. The “Teaching and Learning Framework” for IMPACT lays out a crisp definition of “good” teaching in what D.C. teachers call the “nine commandments”:
1. Lead well-organized, objective-driven lessons.
2. Explain content clearly.
3. Engage students at all learning levels in rigorous work.
4. Provide students with multiple ways to engage with content.
5. Check for student understanding.
6. Respond to student misunderstandings.
7. Develop higher-level understanding through effective questioning.
8. Maximize instructional time.
9. Build a supportive, learning-focused classroom community.
IMPACT uses multiple measures to judge the quality of teaching. Fifty percent of an annual evaluation is based 

Kickin’ Failed DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s butt in Chicago. « Fred Klonsky

Kickin’ Michelle Rhee’s butt in Chicago. « Fred Klonsky:

Kickin’ Michelle Rhee’s butt in Chicago.

by Fred Klonsky

There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t get a bunch of petition requests on Facebook and on email.
Some have been effective. Certainly the story of Trayvon Martin’s shooting received national attention in large part because of the petition campaign organized by Color of Change.
But after a while so many petitions become just noise.
And so some folks can be excused by being fooled into signing a petition that seemed to be supporting a settlement to the teacher contract in Chicago.
Paticularly since it was hosted by Change.org, which bills itself as a clearing house for progressive issues.

Kickin’ Michelle Rhee’s butt in Chicago.

Fred Klonsky at Fred Klonsky - 16 minutes ago

There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t get a bunch of petition requests on Facebook and on email. Some have been effective. Certainly the story of Trayvon Martin’s shooting received national attention in large part because of the petition campaign organized by Color of Change. But after a while so many petitions [...]

The in box. Fans in Peoria.

Fred Klonsky at Fred Klonsky - 46 minutes ago

From Peoriastory: OMG: Education progress, integrity, sold out by Democrats (!) CHICAGO — Fred Klonsky, a retired art teacher, has one of the best blogs anywhere on educational issues. Check it out, where he reveals the education/industrial complex-corporate ties to Obama’s campaign. http://preaprez.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/the-2012-democratic-party-platform-on-education-is-revealed/ It’s the sleeziest situation ever — Demos have turned into Elephants! The conflicts [...]

Dear Cinda. About HJRCA49.

Fred Klonsky at Fred Klonsky - 15 hours ago

In case you missed IEA Communication Director Charlie McBarron’s response to my friend Jerry Mulvihill’s request for polling data, I wanted to repost it today. IEA President Cinda Klickna has claimed that private polling of members dictated that they concede to a plan that would have members contribute more than the 9.4% that they presently [...]

Electing a school board.

Fred Klonsky at Fred Klonsky - 22 hours ago

Chicago has a long and proud history of progressive reform. It also has produced some duds. Like mayoral control of the public schools. Mayoral control was an idea that came from the brain of the second Mayor Daley. So right away you can see the problem. The citizens of Chicago are allowed to elect the [...]

The Innovative Educator: Criminalizing & profiting off students is wrong

The Innovative Educator: Criminalizing & profiting off students is wrong:

Criminalizing & profiting off students is wrong

by noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Nielsen)

Little has changed here in NYC since the Mayor decided we'd treat students like criminals, have em go through metal detectors and force em to give up their digital devices upon entering school. 

Since then I have written more than 100 articles, taught classes, and a written book about the benefits of harnessing the power of cell phones for learning. This especially made sense when the cell phone-banning city  I work in was distributing the devices to thousands of students as part of an incentive program that won the Cannes Lion Titanium Award. 

Unfortunately, even after the writing, teaching, and distributing of devices, kids are still banned from using their personal learning devices. 

A couple years ago Will Richardson explained the important lessons this teaches kids.

1. It teaches them that they don’t deserve to be empowered with 

Counting, measurement, and the Fraser Report « Cooperative Catalyst

Counting, measurement, and the Fraser Report « Cooperative Catalyst:

Counting, measurement, and the Fraser Report

by alanthefriesen

This year’s Fraser Institute report is in.
For those of you unaware of what this means, the Fraser Institute is a private Canadian “think-tank” that concerns itself with education and statistics, attempting to create “a free and prosperous world through choice, markets, and responsibility” by ranking Canadian schools.
Every year, the Fraser Institute releases “report cards” for both elementary and secondary schools, assessing high schools on “diploma examination results, grade-to-grade transition rates, and graduation rates.” All this data is carefully collated and schools are given a score out of ten. My school’s staff room is in a tizzy because our school is not just in the top 20 out of 276 schools in Alberta, but we’ve beat out every other school in our division by 70 points or more.
I looked at what made up this year’s score, and what I’ve discovered has made me laugh, in some cases literally out loud. To put things into perspective, our graduating class last year was 24 students. That’s right: our prestigious score was based on a massive sample size of 24 students. In the top 10 schools, one school had a