Sunday links. « Fred Klonsky

Sunday links. « Fred Klonsky:

Sunday links.

by Fred Klonsky

John Dillon’s Pension Vocabulary for August 4th is A.L.E.C./ Rep. Patti Bellock. Illinois holds the distinction of having the ALEC State Representative of the year:  Representative Patricia “Patti” Bellock of the 47th district (Westmont Office).   A recent letter of congratulations from Republican House Leader Tom Cross – also a member of ALEC -  glowed with the kind of Orwellian political doublespeak  that sanitizes the actual undercutting of the medically needy or marginalized with positive parsing.   
Wal-Mart is saluting teachers? Nah. It’s just propaganda for one of the latest anti-union

Schools Matter: Test Scores and Teacher Evaluation/ Pay: A Primer

Schools Matter: Test Scores and Teacher Evaluation/ Pay: A Primer:

Test Scores and Teacher Evaluation/ Pay: A Primer

by P. L. Thomas

Reporting on the revisions to teacher evaluations in DC public schools, Valerie Strauss makes a key observation:

"When Rhee set the percentage at 50 percent back in 2009, after spending millions of dollars to create the assessment system, she based it on absolutely nothing grounded in research. The 35 percent? Also based on no research."

I have recently argued that test-based teacher evaluations and pay are without credibility (HERE and HERE).

Teachers, parents, and the public who are genuinely concerned about public school quality must enter directly the teacher evaluation/pay debate, but do so informed with the following

An Urban Teacher's Education: SOS Conference 2012, Day Two Afternoon

An Urban Teacher's Education: SOS Conference 2012, Day Two Afternoon:

SOS Conference 2012, Day Two Afternoon

by James Boutin

Sherick speaks; James looks on

After lunch I today attended a session by Karran Harper Royal called “How [Some] African Americans Got on the Wrong Side of the Education Debate. Karran is a parent turned activist who was inspired to speak out after having difficulties twenty years ago with one of her children in kindergarten. She kept worrying that if he didn’t get help, he would get put on a wrong track that he might not be able to get off of.

Karran’s message throughout her talk was that corporate reform’s message is very tempting, and it's excellent at swaying uninformed people, especially poor and minority families who have long histories of negative relationships with their public schools. When charter schools come in waving their uniforms and their money and their “dedication to equity,” Karran says they’re very, very difficult to resist. She even noted that she too was once swayed by their lures, but after then New Orleans School Superintendent Paul Vallas (who has since moved on to Haiti and now Connecticut to promote the privatization of public education) began lying to her and 

Third Anniversary of My Blog | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Third Anniversary of My Blog | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Third Anniversary of My Blog

by larrycuban

Dear Readers,
This post marks my third anniversary as a blogger. I want to thank those readers who regularly read my twice-weekly posts, those who have dipped into them occasionally, those who have subscribed to the post, and finally those who have taken the time to write thoughtful comments. Nearly 325,000 readers from around the world (35 percent outside of the U.S.)  have clicked on to the blog since August 2009. Not exactly viral but, for me, most gratifying.
For the 364 posts I have written in the past three years, I have followed three rules:
1. Write less than 800 words.
2. Write clearly on school reform and classroom practice.
3. Take a position and back it up with evidence.
For anyone who blogs 

Mónica García champions the Gülenist Charter Movement in LAUSD | Dailycensored.com

Mónica García champions the Gülenist Charter Movement in LAUSD | Dailycensored.com:

Mónica García champions the Gülenist Charter Movement in LAUSD

by Robert D. Skeels

This increasingly well-rooted network provides the Gulen Movement with daily access to the minds of over 45,000 students, and yearly access to hundreds of millions of hard-earned tax dollars. — Sharon Higgins

Mónica García, LAUSD’s Gülenist Champion

Charter schools are privately managed entities with negligible oversight, but funded with public money. The somewhat secretive Gülenist Islamic sect, named after charismatic Turkish Imam Fethullah Gülen, runs more charter schools than any other charter school chain in the United States. While there’s nothing wrong with privately financed religious schools, it’s problematic at best that public funds are being used to fund religious charter chains.

The cultish Gülenist Movement currently operates eight such privately managed charter schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). Several more are slated to open after having won approval under the woefully misnamed “Public School Choice” (PSC) resolution, brewed by former LAUSD District 5 Trustee, Yolie Flores, who was also an employee of the Gates Foundation while concurrently “serving” the school district. Flores’ PSC gives brand new school facilities built with public money away to charter school 

CHARTER SCHOOL SCANDALS WEBSITE

CHARTER SCHOOL SCANDALS

A compilation of news articles about charter schools which have been charged with, or are highly suspected of, tampering with admissions, grades, attendance and testing; misuse of funds and embezzlement; engaging in nepotism and conflicts of interest; engaging in complicated and shady real estate deals; and/or have been engaging in other questionable, unethical, borderline-legal, or illegal activities. This is also a record of charter school instability and other unsavory tidbits.

Couldn't Find Your Own Special Charter School Scandal

Just Type the name of your city or charter school in the box below

CHARTER SCHOOL SCANDALS

If you don't find yours today

Keep checking

CHARTER SCHOOL SCANDALS

Be sure to check out two other Great blogs:

-THE BROAD REPORT (as in Eli) -THE PERIMETER PRIMATE

An Open Letter to Barck Obama About Education Rational Mathematics Education

Rational Mathematics Education:

An Open Letter to Barck Obama About Education

Dear Mr. President:


I wish you a happy birthday. But I must also wish that you would truly listen to and heed the voices of real teachers, scholars, children, and parents when it comes turning away from the disaster your policies have been for democratic, free, public education.

As long as Arne Duncan is US Sec. of Education, you will be promoting an undemocratic approach, heretofore unprecedented in our history, to imposing federal will on state and local educational practices. Were the policies your administration is effectively enforcing states to adopt good ones (which they are not), I would still hesitate to support the MEANS through which you are promoting them. But as they are not, I am doubly worried about the precedent you are setting for the next George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, or worse: since YOU forced states to accept Race to the Top 

What it means when test scores plummet - Failed DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee Was There

What it means when test scores plummet - Class Struggle - The Washington Post:

What it means when test scores plummet

By Jay Mathews

Was There

Last Thursday, D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray and officials from D.C. public schools and the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) held a news conference to crow about results on tests administered in April. Proficiency rates on both reading and math sections of the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System exams were up slightly for many grades in schools across the district, the mayor said.

He took credit for those improvements – a 2.8 percentage point jump from 2011 to 2012 in the number of children proficient in math, a 0.5 point increase in reading proficiency. The results “are proof positive,” he said, that a program he introduced to make pre-kindergarten more widely available is already having an impact.

Over the past five years, proficiency gains are even larger – up 18.1 percentage points in math and 9.5 percentage points in reading since 2007. But when you look closely at the school-by-school results also released last week, some are discouraging, particularly at the very schools celebrated in 2008, 2009 and 2010 for their soaring proficiency 

Inside Colocation

Inside Colocation:

3RD AUG 2012

One of the perks of my new room is the nice view of this lovely tree. However, what you’re seeing is not a romantic haze. It’s a very dirty window. Success Academy, still plowing through construction of the basement, issued several permits for our hardworking custodial staff to work 24 hours, an extremely difficult rope to pull. Of course, once Success’ need for the extra staff was fulfilled, the permits all ran out and could not be renewed for custodial to do the necessary repairs and deep cleaning on the upper three floors, leaving them time for only the most routine maintenance in the rest of the building. And as for teachers, well we’ve been allotted five paid hours for