Wisconsin’s new school grading index: ‘a dog’s breakfast of numbers’:

Wisconsin’s new school grading index: ‘a dog’s breakfast of numbers’

Posted by Valerie Strauss on October 26, 2012 at 4:00 am

Wisconsin cows

Another day, another state comes up with another cockamamie way to grade schools for “accountability” purposes. In this post Gene V. Glass, Regents’ Professor Emeritus at Arizona State University and senior researcher at the University of Colorado-Boulder’s National Education Policy Center, looks at the very large problems with Wisconsin’s new Overall Accountability Index meant to grade public schools. (Read it to see why it is being accompanied by a picture of cows.)

By Gene V. Glass

To receive a waiver of No Child Left Behind sanctions, the State of Wisconsin took steps this year to bolster its accountability provisions by creating a complex system for grading public schools. Its new Overall Accountability Index (OAI) is supposed to reveal to the public 

Why MCPS Seven Keys to College Readiness should be tossed

by Valerie Strauss

Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland is one of the most successful districts in the country. On its website you will find a page listing the Seven Keys to College Readiness, which are said to be a pathway for students to follow that will increase their chances of being ready for and successful in college. Here is a piece questioning whether the keys are a reasonable path for students to aspire to follow. It was written by David Bernstein, a nonprofit executive who lives in Gaithersburg, Md., and has two sons, ages 7 and 15. He haspreviously written about how even great schools fail students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
Read full article >>

SI&A Cabinet Report – News Analysis: Election fallout will claim many important, less visible projects

SI&A Cabinet Report – News & Resources:

News Analysis: Election fallout will claim many important, less visible projects
By Tom Chorneau
Friday, October 26, 2012

With everything else schools have riding on next month’s election, progress on many less obvious but still critical programs and projects will also be jeopardized if voters turn down tax measures on Nov. 6.

The work of updating California’s teacher performance assessment, for example, could be set back as education programs statewide brace for another round of big cuts.

The testing, designed to measure a new teacher candidate’s ability to carry out state professional standards, is overseen by the Commission on Teacher Credentialing whose budget is largely drawn from fees from credential applications and test administration – both activities that have crashed the past three years.

Officials say an update on the performance assessment is long overdue, with key components more than a decade old. There’s also a need to align the testing with the new common core curriculum standards that California adopted two years ago and is in the process of introducing into classrooms.

Even if the CTC can find the resources to press ahead with the TPA update, officials within the California State 

Daily Kos: Rubi at 100: still teaching

Daily Kos: Rubi at 100: still teaching:

Rubi at 100: still teaching

by rss@dailykos.com (teacherken)

Four years ago I mentioned in a diary the women who had first taught me cello more than half a century ago, and persuaded my sister and myself to go to what was then National Music Camp in Interlochen Michigan, which she herself had attended in 1929.  A few days later I got an email from her daughter, who happened to have googled her mom and found my post, and who informed me her mother, then 96, was still teaching.
On October 19 Rubi Wentzel turned 100.  Her daughter Leslie Krikorian, invited me to California for the celebration the next day, Saturday October 20.  I flew to Oakland, drove to Lafayette, and was there to honor this remarkable woman:

Please keep reading as I tell you about her, and share some photos from the event.

Three statistics from Virginia worth remembering

by rss@dailykos.com (teacherken)

1.  A 19% increase in the number of Latinos registered to vote since 2008
2.  A 7% increase of African-American registration
3.  Just shy of 60% of those registering to vote in the last two months are younger than 30
Unlike what likely voter screens say, where they may presume turnout will be only 70% of registered voters,

Eugene Robinson: What America will we pick?

by rss@dailykos.com (teacherken)

My title has the question Eugene Robinson asks as the title of his Friday Washington Post column, which I highly recommend.
He begins simply enough

This election is only tangentially a fight over policy. It is also a fight about meaning and identity — and that’s one reason voters are so polarized. It’s about who we are and who we aspire to 

Krugman: Mr. Romney doesn’t have an economic plan at all

by rss@dailykos.com (teacherken)

In his Friday column, Pointing Towards Prosperity?, the Nobel Laureate compares the economic plans of the two presidential candidates.

Well, as I’ve said before, Mr. Romney’s “plan” is a sham. It’s a list of things he claims will happen, with no description of the policies he would follow to make those things happen.

and  Krugman says he can come up with a one-point plan that trumps Romney's:  

Here it is: Every American will have a good job with good wages. Also, a blissfully 

Study Finds Relationship Between Education, Income and Brain Development | toteachornototeach

Study Finds Relationship Between Education, Income and Brain Development | toteachornototeach:

Study Finds Relationship Between Education, Income and Brain Development

by aristotlethewise

Study Finds Relationship Between Education, Income and Brain Development

A paper delivered at the annual Society for Neuroscientists meeting contended that there was a relationship between income and educational attainment of the parents and the development of their child’s brain – especially areas used in learning, memory and stress processing. The researchers studied brain scans of children whose parents ranged in levels of education of between 8 and 21 years and whose family income fell between below-poverty to $140,000.
Kimberly Noble, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Columbia University, was the lead author of the report who was assisted by Elizabeth Sowell of University of Southern California. Together they discovered that the hippocampus area of the brain, which controls memory and learning, was larger in children who came from families that enjoyed a higher income. Children of parents who had a high level of education had smaller 

Thomas Friedman Loooves "Race to the Top"... Should You? :: Frederick M. Hess

Thomas Friedman Loooves "Race to the Top"... Should You? :: Frederick M. Hess:

Thomas Friedman Loooves "Race to the Top"... Should You?

by Frederick M. Hess  •  Oct 26, 2012 at 7:03 am
Cross-posted from Education Week

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The NYT's Thomas Friedman is at it again. Last Sunday, with his customary humility, he opined in "Obama's Best-Kept Secrets," "While I don't know how Obamacare will come out, I'm certain that my two favorite Obama initiatives will be transformative." One of the two was Race to the Top (the other was the President's push to boost mileage standards for cars and trucks).

On the one hand, Friedman cheerleading for ambitious federal programs is no surprise. After all, he's the guy who has damned the frustrating, pluralistic, federal design of the American system, saying on Meet the Press in 2010, "It's why I have fantasized...what if we could just be China for a day?" On the other hand, Friedman treats dubious assertions as established fact. He suggests that 4,500 union affiliates signing meaningless pledges is a game-changer. He repeats, without qualification, Duncan's claims about miraculous results on school turnarounds and student discipline. Ignoring broken promises and eye-popping tales of implementation headaches and bureaucracy that a reporter could tackle, he blithely announces that "even states that did not win [RTT] have been implementing their proposals anyway."

As voters weigh President Obama's first term, it seems a good time to offer a slightly more acerbic take on 

Report: weighted student formula alone not enough | EdSource Today

Report: weighted student formula alone not enough | EdSource Today:

Report: weighted student formula alone not enough

October 26th, 2012 | 4 Comments | 
By John Fensterwald

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Less experienced, lower paid teachers tend to teach in schools with the poorest children, while veteran, higher paid teachers work predominantly in schools with fewer needy children, contributing to significant funding disparities among schools within most of the state’s largest school districts. That gap wouldn’t necessarily change under the education finance reform that Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed; it might even worsen under a new formula, says Oakland-based Education Trust-West in a new school spending analysis released on Thursday.

In Tipping the Scale Towards Equity, Ed Trust-West reaffirms its support in principle for Brown’s concept of a weighted student formula, allocating potentially thousands of dollars per student to districts with the heaviest concentrations of English learners and low-income students. But Ed Trust-West, which advocates for needy children, calls for the governor to include provisions that will assure that the extra money for 

Greetings from the Rephormiest Place in America | EduShyster

Greetings from the Rephormiest Place in America | EduShyster:

Greetings from the Rephormiest Place in America

by edushyster2012

Pioneers for excellence and choice break ground on what will be the 13th charter school in Douglas County, Colorado, the rephormiest place in America.

Reader: nothing brings me more joy each day than the arrival of the EduShyster mailbag. Will it contain a shiny alert from one of the interchangeable #edreform PAC-lets, trumpeting vaguely and ominously about parents’ rights? Or perhaps there is to be news of a fresh new study boldly claiming the need for freshness and innovation in our schools—if we are to begin to try to meet the anticipated needs of tomorrow today…
Alas, the EduShyster mailbag contained something far more delightful: a postcard from an EduShyster premium reader who happens to find herself living, teaching and parenting in one of the rephormiest places in the US of A: 

High School Teacher Lesson Plans Go Open Source - US News and World Report

High School Teacher Lesson Plans Go Open Source - US News and World Report:

High School Teacher Lesson Plans Go Open Source

Educators can download free teaching materials and get paid to share their lessons.

By KELSEY SHEEHY

October 26, 2012 RSS Feed Print

Teachers can share lesson plans with colleagues nationwide using sites such as Share My Lesson.

For a high school French teacher looking for a creative approach to verb conjugation, new lesson plans are only a website away. The same is true for a biology teacher covering a unit on mammals, or a history teacher trying to spice up a lesson on the Gettysburg Address.

Educators are beginning to embrace the type of open source content championed by software programmers by sharing their expertise online: lesson plans, classroom activities, and 

School Tech Connect: The Abyss

School Tech Connect: The Abyss:

The Abyss

by noreply@blogger.com (Tim Furman)

It does not surprise me that they're just throwing money at people and not even tracking it. That's how these things work.

In Florida, state officials had no records of which schools received federal grant money nor which schools received on-site monitoring and audits. Florida received $67.6 million.

Seriously, go read the entire story. DOE has given away almost a billion dollars to charter schools since 2008, and yet there's this:

Additionally, the audit, which was conducted by San Francisco-based education research company WestEd, found that the office did not review expenditures to ensure they met with federal disbursement requirements.

On a related note, I have for a couple of years been trying to get my arms around the relationship between the New Market Tax Credit program and the construction of charter schools. It's a long story; 

NYC Educator: If We Could Put that State of Mind in a Bottle, We'd Be Rich

NYC Educator: If We Could Put that State of Mind in a Bottle, We'd Be Rich:

If We Could Put that State of Mind in a Bottle, We'd Be Rich

by NYC Educator

Yesterday a girl in my class got a 44 on my test. It freaked me out a little, because the test was fairly easy. In fact, it was a multiple choice test, which I don't usually give, and she filled in eight "E" answers, though the options were only A, B, C, and D.

This is the third test I've given this year. She was absent for the first one, and was out for three days in a row. In the rush of beginning the year, I failed to follow up on that. However, the second time she missed a test, I got a guidance counselor who spoke her language to call home. Since then, she's been early for class every day and hasn't missed a single moment.

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Crosscut Pro and Con on I-1240

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Crosscut Pro and Con on I-1240:

Crosscut Pro and Con on I-1240

by Charlie Mas

Crosscut is running two articles on I-1240, one in favor and one opposed.

They are worth reading if only because the article in favor demonstrates the naive and thoughtless acceptance of every myth and marketing line offered by the proponents of charters. The person writing in favor of the initiative is a voucher advocate living in a rural area. He doesn't know what he talking about and he obviously hasn't given any of it much thought. It's sad, really.

Partnering Parents with Education

by Melissa Westbrook

Education Week highlights a new publication, Promising Partnership Practices 2012, with 92 ways schools are partnering with parents and community.  The publication is for sale but individual stories are available as PDFs for free.

• "Me 2! Getting Parents into Middle School," explains how Park Middle School in Kennewick, Wash., created the expectation that parents would volunteer for two hours a year at the school. The campaign included tracking progress on the 1,800-hour goal and "talking up" the expectation with students.
• "The A.S.P.I.R.E. Survey" is used at Bassick High School in Bridgeport, Conn., to find out what talents 

Education in the Age of Globalization » Blog Archive » Performance Enhancing Drugs in School–From Doug Green

Education in the Age of Globalization » Blog Archive » Performance Enhancing Drugs in School–From Doug Green:

Performance Enhancing Drugs in School–From Doug Green

26 OCTOBER 2012 52 NO COMMENT

(A guest post by Dr. Doug Green at http://www.drdouggreen.com/).

With all of the news about Lance Armstrong, who seems to be the poster boy for performance enhancing drugs (PEDs), I think it’s time to look at how this situation impacts schools. School districts in many districts have been testing high school students for a while to see it they are engaged in the kind of cheating that Lance has been accused of. In some districts the testing goes beyond sports to extra curricular activities. You have to wonder what kind of PED’s the chess team is taking. At the same time, we also are hearing outcries about medications given to students so that they can perform better in the classroom. The most common efforts involve prescriptions for drugs like Ritalin and Adderall for children who supposedly have attention deficit disorder, which may also feature hyperactivity or ADHD. The idea is that drugs such as these will help the child focus and sit still. The opposing view that is getting more air today, is that if we can’t change the environment, let’s change the kids. If you listen to Sir Ken Robinson, what we are doing is drugging kids so that they can focus on boring stuff.

In some districts, the results of standardized tests are used to determine which middle school or high 

Schools Matter: TRACK ME!

Schools Matter: TRACK ME!:

TRACK ME!

by Jim Horn

When corporate education antiquarians reformers talk about the virtues of charter schools, high on their list is charter freedom from bureaucratic red tape and regulations that rule the "government" schools.  Without such restrictions, the story goes, charter schools are free to innovate, adapt to changing needs locally, and improve learning.  Sounds great, right?

What this means in reality is that charter school corporations, both nonprofit and forprofit, are unconstrained in opening schools in any discarded shell of a building, without libraries, gyms, art rooms, clinics, or any of the other humanizing elements we associate with public schools in the suburbs.   They are also without restraint in the way they hire and fire teachers without due process, unregulated in the way they deal with parents or keep their books, and most importantly, they are unregulated in the way they run these urban reform schools based on a 19th Century instructional model and an 18th Century behavioral catechism.

 Children with special education plans (IEPs) are left without special education teachers, and children who 

Mississippi School Charged With Arresting Kids For Flatulence, Wrong Color Socks, Breaking Pencils

School-To-Prison Pipeline Lawsuits - Business Insider:

Mississippi School Charged With Arresting Kids For Flatulence, Wrong Color Socks, Breaking Pencils

The Justice Department is taking a stand against an educational policy in Mississippi that incarcerates kids for just being kids.

The department says in its lawsuit that officials in the city of Meridian and Lauderdale County "routinely arrest students without determining whether there is probable cause when a school wants to press charges, and the students are routinely jailed," The Associated Press reported Wednesday.

Students get in trouble for such minor offenses as wearing the wrong color socks, flatulence in class, and swearing.

But this startling program, dubbed the "school-to-prison pipeline," doesn't seem

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/school-to-prison-pipeline-lawsuits-2012-10#ixzz2APwyz7PV

An Extraordinary Display of Student Power at One of the Nation’s Oldest HBCUs « Student Activism

An Extraordinary Display of Student Power at One of the Nation’s Oldest HBCUs « Student Activism:

An Extraordinary Display of Student Power at One of the Nation’s Oldest HBCUs

by Angus Johnston

On Wednesday, students at Wilberforce University, a small historically black college just outside of Dayton Ohio, gave a demonstration of what student power can mean.
Fed up with the college’s failure to address its longstanding problems, than three hundred of the school’s five hundred enrolled students marched on Wilberforce’s administrative offices to request transfer applications. Some 337 the demonstrators — two thirds of the college’s student body — are said to be prepared to request transfer to nearby Central State University next fall if their demands aren’t met.
The students’ complaints include high tuition, reductions in student services, and unchecked mold in one

Apocalypse Now for California Public Higher Ed?

by Angus Johnston

Most observers of the American university are intimately familiar with the long-term decline and recent degradation of public higher education in California (if you need a refresher, check out Aaron Bady and Mike Konczal’s excellent overview in the new Dissent magazine). Unless you’re inside CA, however, you may have missed word of the time bomb that’s set to explode there in just eleven days.
California’s government is hobbled by its ballot proposition process, a seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time 

Cartoons on Problems and Dilemmas | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Cartoons on Problems and Dilemmas | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Cartoons on Problems and Dilemmas

by larrycuban

As a high school history teacher and district superintendent, I had to learn the differences between problems and dilemmas because the former required solutions and the latter required compromises. As a researcher and professor, I worked with K-12 teachers, principals, school board members and superintendents in distinguishing between problems and dilemmas when it came to figuring out school reforms and getting into complexities of classroom practice. Occasionally, I would use cartoons to make my points. I wished that I had used many more than I did. Over the past year, I have collected some that I offer here. Enjoy*

Missouri Education Watchdog: Would Dr. Suess Approve of Data Determining "The Places You'll Go"?

Missouri Education Watchdog: Would Dr. Suess Approve of Data Determining "The Places You'll Go"?:

Would Dr. Suess Approve of Data Determining "The Places You'll Go"?

by stlgretchen

Suess was writing about personal journeys, not about data determining those personal journeys

"Oh, the Places You'll Go!"  Remember the Dr. Suess book with that name?  It's a book given to many graduates as they enter the world.  It's a book about choices, change, risk and growth a young boy faces as he explores life.  Excerpts from a summary of "Oh, the Places You'll Go!" from suite101.com:

Oh The Places You'll Go describes up times and down times, waiting times and stressful 

Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day… | …For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL

Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day… | …For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL:

More Resources On Different Cultures

Larry Ferlazzo at Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... - 9 hours ago

Here are the newest additions to The Best Sites For Learning About The World’s Different Cultures (I’m also add that entire “The Best” list to The Best Geography Sites For Beginning & Intermediate English Language Learners): Chinese families’ worldly goods … Continue reading →

“Quicklinkr” Looks Like It Could Be Useful For Many Purposes

Larry Ferlazzo at Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... - 9 hours ago

Quicklinkr lets you very easily collect websites, images, videos, etc — without requiring registration. They are shown with screenshots, and you can put them into “folders.” It appears you have to register if you want to come back to edit … Continue reading →

More Resources On The Presidential Election

Larry Ferlazzo at Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... - 10 hours ago

Here are the newest additions to The Best Resources For Learning About The 2012 U.S. Presidential Election: BBC poll: Rest of world favours Obama is from The BBC. Obama-Romney foreign policy debate: Mapping the mentions – interactive comes from The … Continue reading →

Today’s Halloween Update

Larry Ferlazzo at Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... - 10 hours ago

Here are the newest additions to The Best Websites For Learning About Halloween: Here’s a complete collection of Halloween resources from The New York Times Learning Network. Zombie pumpkins invade New York’s Botanical Garden is a video from the BBC.

Resources About The Hajj

Larry Ferlazzo at Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... - 10 hours ago

Millions of Muslims make the annual pilgrimage, called the Hajj, to Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Because the Islamic calendar is a lunar calendar based on the motion of the moon, the time of the Hajj is different time each year … Continue reading →

Schooling in the Ownership Society: Billionaires jump into Louisiana school board race. Why?

Schooling in the Ownership Society: Billionaires jump into Louisiana school board race. Why?:

Billionaires jump into Louisiana school board race. Why?

by Mike Klonsky

An  article in the Oct. 17 Nation by  Matthew Cunningham-Cook, asks the question, "Why Do Some of America's Wealthiest Individuals Have Fingers in Louisiana's Education System?"

As Naomi Klein detailed in The Shock Doctrine, post-Katrina New Orleans has been Ground Zero for efforts to privatize schools and weaken teacher unions—hallmarks of education reform. After the hurricane, the vast majority of New Orleans public schools were taken over by the states’ Recovery School District—the district that was subsequently headed by John White. Nearly all of the city’s 7,500 public school employees were fired, although a few were later rehired. The post-Katrina shock also saw the advent of a limited voucher