The Official Education Rephorm Lexicon | EduShyster

The Official Education Rephorm Lexicon | EduShyster:

The Official Education Rephorm Lexicon

by edushyster2012

A portfolio is a discredited approach to education reform and a brief case in which papers explaining the excellence of said approach can be carried.

 Like you I spend many hours each day aligning myself with the new Common Core standards. And already the payoff has been huge. My scores on the standardized tests that I administer to myself three times per week have risen incredibly, while my Value Added has also shot up, except around the house where I continue to refuse to lift a finger. Nowhere has my improvement been more excellent than in mastering new vocabulary. Yesterday alone I acquired two new Tier Seven vocabulary terms: oenophile and Jeroboam.

Now I realize that not everyone has the time and high expectations required to wade through the Common Core Language Strand in the manner that I am doing. That’s why EduShyster is pleased to offer her very own direct, deep-level Instructional Strategies to help readers acquire new vocabulary. Note: these strategies cannot be 

Michigan collective bargaining rights. Nuns on the Bus Tour. « Fred Klonsky

Michigan collective bargaining rights. Nuns on the Bus Tour. « Fred Klonsky:

Michigan collective bargaining rights. Nuns on the Bus Tour.

by Fred Klonsky

MORNING UPDATE: LISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH 11-5-12 Diane Ravitch's blog

Diane Ravitch's blog:

A Teacher Grades the Houston Independent School District

by dianerav

This teacher in Houston reviews what is happening in HISD schools.
Anyone know the HISD superintendent Terry Grier?
The teacher’s evaluation:
Another transplanted North Carolina education experience. I teach in Texas in the largest school district that has inherited one of North Carolina’s education mediums, T. Grier. In his ready, shoot, aim masterplan, all teachers are graded on the growth of their students on a year to year basis, as the statistical junkies decide that growth will be measured on EVAAS- a nonpeer reviewed performance analyis program. This is in addition to a whole slew of other tests. We personally ran into an issue where our social studies students were passing 95% of the tests or higher provided by the State, but when the results did not grow past 95% the teachers were penalized! There is no average of, say, three years performance, or a plateau of achievement where the grading stops, but a slap for high achievement – the District refused to reconsider our highly validated protests.
Teachers were baited with the prospect of “bonus” money, and assumed we were like pipe salepersons who 

More Evidence: Value-Added Assessment Is Junk Science

by dianerav

Linda Darling-Hammond and Edward Haertel of Stanford University explain why value-added assessment doesn’t work and how inaccurate it is.
Will John Deasy listen? Will the Gates Foundation listen?
Will the Los Angeles Times, which published their article, stop seeking names to publish inaccurate data about teacher “effectiveness”?

Wisconsin Raises Standards, Voucher Schools and MPS Schools Plummet

by dianerav

Wisconsin decided to raise the passing mark on its tests, and the results were not pretty in Milwaukee.
90% of students in voucher schools were found not to be “proficient” in math or reading.
In the Milwaukee public schools, 85% were not proficient in reading and 80% were not proficient in math.

Public Funds Used in Bridgeport to Push Mayor’s Campaign to Abolish Voting Rights

by dianerav

Jonathan Pelto has the story and the numbers.
Hospitals, public utilities and other public entities have given large sums to the mayor’s campaign to persuade voters to give up their right to elect their school board.
Unbelievable.

Fixing Public Education in Indiana

by dianerav

This passionate teacher in Indiana has the solution to improving education in Indiana:
1. Incentivize teachers by allowing the academic freedom to teach
2. End poverty
3. Vote for Glenda Ritz to replace Tony Bennett

Voters in Pennsylvania: Support Public Education

by dianerav

Education Voters Action of Pennsylvania interviewed candidates and endorsed those who support public schools.
Don’t be fooled.
Vote for those who support democratically governed public schools.

California Court Orders Shadowy Group to List Donors

by dianerav

In an important decision, a California judge ordered a group called “Americans for Responsible Leadership” to release the names of its donors.
The Arizona-based group has poured $11 million into two California ballot issues.
The group is pushing voters in California to defeat a tax increase that would benefit the schools of California.
The other issue would curb the influence of unions.
Let’s see if they comply before the election.
It will be interesting to learn where all that money is coming from to gut the funding of public education

Diane in the Evening ***Urgent Message*** 11-4-12 Diane Ravitch's blog

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 5 hours ago

Diane Ravitch's blog: An Urgent Message for Voters Who Support Public Education by dianerav There are critical elections taking place on Tuesday throughout the country that parents, education advocates, and others who care about preserving and strengthening our public schools need to take notice of and cast their ballot appropriately. Out-of-state money from billionaires and astroturf groups like Students First are flowing into state races, like this one in Tennessee and local school board elections, like these in New Orleans and New Jersey, to push damaging policies to privati... more »

MORNING UPDATE: LISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH 11-4-12 Diane Ravitch's blog

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 10 hours ago

Diane Ravitch's blog: [image: Click on picture to Listen to Diane Ravitch] Boldest Candidacy of the Season by dianerav TFA alum moves to Minneapolis in May. Decides to run for school board to share his youth and spirit of innovation. Raises seven times as much as experienced teacher from out-of-state friends. Money can’t buy you love but can it buy a school board seat? Are the voters fooled? We will see soon enough. Big $$$ Swamps Oakland School Board Race by dianerav School board elections in Oakland, California, are usually low-budget races, as they are in most places. But this yea... more »

What High School Teachers Wish Parents Asked at Conferences - High School Notes (usnews.com)

What High School Teachers Wish Parents Asked at Conferences - High School Notes (usnews.com):

What High School Teachers Wish Parents Asked at Conferences

By KELSEY SHEEHY

November 5, 2012 RSS Feed Print

Asking the right questions can help parents and teachers get the most out of conferences.

Parent-teacher conferences give parents some much-needed face time with their teen's teacher, but many parents don't take advantage of the opportunity.

"Parents need to be just as involved in teacher conferences, if not more, at the high school level as they are during the elementary years," says Rebecca Thiegs, a language arts teacher at Red Lion Area Senior High School inPennsylvania. "The sad reality is showing us that it's the opposite in many public schools."

As high school students inch closer and closer to college, parents can help ensure their student is on the right path by participating in teacher conferences. If a student is headed in the wrong direction, teachers can use the time to advise 

Interest in master teacher credential for California won’t go away - SI&A Cabinet Report

SI&A Cabinet Report – News & Resources:

Interest in master teacher credential for California won’t go away
By Tom Chorneau
Sunday, November 04, 2012

After years of debate and discussion, supporters of a new master teacher credential in California find themselves largely back at square one following a veto this fall of a bill promoting the concept.

And some are saying a formal license may not be the right way to go.

A tool used for decades in many higher-performing counties, the master teacher position promises a new resource to districts for coaching up new and less established educators – while also providing a new career option to veteran and successful teachers.

Interest in establishing state standards and credential for the position dates back more than a decade, but getting the many stakeholders to agree has proved problematic.

One new factor has come out of the Obama administration’s push for new teacher evaluations systems tied to student tests scores. Some districts have successfully experimented with employing master teachers as part of the review process, which has in some cases reduced opposition to the evaluations.

AB 1765 by Assemblywoman Julia Brownley appeared to provide a breakthrough last summer by proposing that the 

Vast inequality lurks behind mind-numbing data on school spending | EdSource Today

Vast inequality lurks behind mind-numbing data on school spending | EdSource Today:

Vast inequality lurks behind mind-numbing data on school spending

November 4th, 2012 | Add a Comment | 
By Arun Ramanathan

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Arun Ramanathan

School finance has the power to bring tears to my eyes. Sometimes, when I am reading the latest School Services of California bulletin, I start squinting. Then I start yawning. Then, before I know it, I’m squinting and yawning simultaneously, causing my eyes to water.  When I see the words “revenue limit,” I begin looking for a pillow. The explanation of the difference between a “Test 1” and a “Test 2” year for calculating Proposition 98 funding can actually cause my brain to melt out of my ears.

Despite these disturbing effects, my organization, the Education Trust-West, is focusing our attention on education finance. Earlier this year, we released “The Cruel Divide,” looking at the difference in funding between wealthy and poor districts. After running the numbers, we found that the poorest districts in California actually receive $620 less per pupil than the wealthiest districts. Around the time that we released that paper, the “Occupy” protests were in full swing, and the issue of income inequality was in the media spotlight. To this day, I wonder if I shouldn’t have taken our finance briefs to the Occupy encampment in downtown Oakland and given a detailed explanation of the impact of Proposition 13 on unrestricted school district revenue. My speech would have given protestors 

Fresno coaxes union to sign, enters Race to the Top - by John Fensterwald

by John Fensterwald

If they awarded points for effort, Fresno Unified would get two Race to the Top grants. After a marathon meeting that concluded early Friday morning, Superintendent Michael Hanson and leaders of the Fresno Teachers Association agreed on wording of the district’s application for a $37.3 million piece of the $400 million competition open to districts nationwide. It had looked like Fresno would join...

Campaign spending to promote Props. 30 and 38 exceeds $100 million - by Louis Freedberg

by Louis Freedberg

Proponents of Propositions 30 and 38 have now poured a combined total of $117 million to convince voters to support their respective measures, both of which are intended to raise billions of dollars for schools and other programs. Spending on behalf of Proposition 30, the tax initiative sponsored by Governor Jerry Brown that will raise an average of $6 billion for schools and other state...

Education in the Age of Globalization » Blog Archive » Suspend Testing after the Hurricane: An Open Letter from Denny Taylor

Education in the Age of Globalization » Blog Archive » Suspend Testing after the Hurricane: An Open Letter from Denny Taylor:

Suspend Testing after the Hurricane: An Open Letter from Denny Taylor

by YongZhao

Two Important Research Findings on Children and Trauma Support the Halting of Testing in K-12 Public Schools: An Open Letter to Governor Christie, Governor Cuomo and Mayor Bloomberg er Denny Taylor, Professor of Literacy Studies, Founding Director of the International Center for Everybody’s Child, Hofstra University 11-4-12 Dear Governor Christie, Governor Cuomo, and Mayor Bloomberg, I write to applaud your rapid response to Hurricane Sandy. You have been decisive in your decision making and tireless in your efforts to care for all those who have suffered because of the brute force of the ...

Hurricane Sandy: Recommendations for Administrators and Teachers by Denny Taylor

by YongZhao

Professor Denny Taylor of Hofstra University asked me to share this. Thanks, Denny.–Yong November 3, 2012 Recommendations for Administrators and Teachers Responding to Hurricane Sandy: Hurricane Sandy has created long lasting catastrophic conditions in the North East of the United States. People are making heroic efforts to respond to the emergency.  At hospitals in New York City nurses arrived on Sunday and did not leave until Wednesday evening. On Monday Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of NYC, called on New York teachers to be first responders in public shelters in the city. ...

Daily Kos: Predicting the Latino vote

Daily Kos: Predicting the Latino vote:

Predicting the Latino vote

by rss@dailykos.com (teacherken)

By now, most denizens of this site realize that most polls, both national and state, do not accurately include Latinos in their models.  For one things, Latinos heavily rely upon cell phones, and those polls which use automatic dialers cannot call cell phones (which may mean they under-sample young people as well).  While some automated pollsters attempt to adjust their models to account for this, not all do.
Further, there is a significant percentage of pollsters who do not offer a bilingual option for those Spanish speaker who are not comfortable being interviewed in English.  We have known for some time this result in (1) under-reporting Latinos as a share of the voting electorate, and (2) possibly tilting the distribution of those Latinos participating as inclined to vote for Republicans.
Latino Decisions has been running a poll for 11 weeks with bi-lingual interviewers, and since it does not auto-dial not needing the adjustment for cell phones, which are included.  You can see the cumulative results here 
A couple of things to note:
1.  Rate of Hispanic participation they expect a total participation rate of 77% or more -  in this blog post they 

Atlanta lawmaker to push parent trigger bill in January. Cites North Atlanta High as an example of why it’s needed. | Get Schooled

Atlanta lawmaker to push parent trigger bill in January. Cites North Atlanta High as an example of why it’s needed. | Get Schooled:

Atlanta lawmaker to push parent trigger bill in January. Cites North Atlanta High as an example of why it’s needed.

by Maureen Downey

In a break from the charter school debate, here is something coming your way in January — a push for a parent trigger law in Georgia by Atlanta state Rep. Edward Lindsey. (See earlier blog on parent trigger laws.)
The trigger law allows parents to take over a failing school and reopen it as an independent charter if they collect signatures from the majority of families. Only a few states have a parent trigger law.  The first was enacted in California in 2010 and adopted since in some fashion in Connecticut, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas.
But 20 other states, including Georgia, have seen unsuccessful efforts to pass parent trigger laws. The film “Won’t Back Down” was a fictional account of a school takeover over a parent trigger law.
This is the official release:

State Representative Edward Lindsey, R-Atlanta,  the Georgia House Majority Whip, announced 

Politics and school reform: Power, ideology and the use of evidence:

Politics and school reform: Power, ideology and the use of evidence

Posted by Valerie Strauss on November 5, 2012 at 4:00 am

Last week we learned that Republican legislators had pressured the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service into withdrawing a report that reached a conclusion about tax rates and economic growth that undercut a central GOP philosophy. What does this have to do with school reform? Larry Cuban explains below. here. Cuban was superintendent of Arlington Public Schools for seven years and a high school social studies teacher for 14 years. He is professor emeritus of education at Stanford University, where he has taught for more than 20 years. This first appeared on his blog.

By Larry Cuban

On the eve of the nation’s voters going to the polls, a truth about policymakers’ use of evidence arrives in plain sight. Sure, the obscene spending from Super PACs on political ads shows how evidence can be bent into grotesque shapes to support one candidate over another. Fact-checkers have had a bumper season. But political ads are a genre that all of 

Louisiana Educator: Jindal Defeat a Lesson for Educators

Louisiana Educator: Jindal Defeat a Lesson for Educators:

Jindal Defeat a Lesson for Educators

by Michael Deshotels

Educators (teachers, principals, and school board members) have the power to reverse or correct most of the Jindal damage to public education and the teaching profession! That's the lesson we can take from the decisive defeat suffered by Governor Jindal last Thursday on his effort to privatize the Group Benefits insurance program.The political lesson to be learned and utilized by educators is that when a large group of voters is adversely affected by a government action and they choose to put maximum pressure on their representatives in government, they win!

The action last week was supposed to be a simple rubber stamping by hand picked legislative committee members of the Governor's decision to turn over our successful, cost effective group benefits program to the Governor's friends at Blue Cross. But this time the educators, state workers and particularly the retired educators and retired state workers decided they had had enough of Jindal's bullying. The word spread quickly 

The Educated Reporter: Washington State Considers Charter Schools, Missouri Voters Mull Tobacco Tax Hike for Education Funding

The Educated Reporter: Washington State Considers Charter Schools, Missouri Voters Mull Tobacco Tax Hike for Education Funding:

Washington State Considers Charter Schools, Missouri Voters Mull Tobacco Tax Hike for Education Funding

by Emily Richmond

When it comes to education, there’s much at stake Tuesday beyond the race for president. Voters in several states are being asked to approve significant changes to how public schools operate and are funded.

There are two particularly interesting ballot measures in play – in Washington State, where voters will be asked to allow the formation of charter schools, and in Missouri, where a significant hike in the state’s tobacco tax could raise badly needed revenues for both K-12 and higher education.

Let’s start in Washington, which is one of just nine states that currently prohibits charter schools – campuses that receive public dollars but are operated more or less independently. (The degree of independence depends on 

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES:

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

by Mike Klonsky

"CPS and Mayor Emanuel want to do to our schools what Mayor Daley did to the parking meters." -- Windy Pearson (Action Now) at Friday's City Hall sit-in [Video]

Barbara Byrd-Bennett

“We need to acknowledge that the community simply does not believe what we say we’re going to do.” -- Sun-Times 

Pauline Lipman (UIC Prof.)

 "If school closings were such good policy, why aren't they closing schools in white communities?"- At Friday's City Hall sit-in. 

Aquila Griffin

Dyett High School student, Aquila Griffin 

“My message to our mayor and Barbara Byrd-Bennett is we are not collateral damage. CPS has to answer for ignoring the voice of the people most 

If the goal is 100% "failure" then we're almost there

by Mike Klonsky

After nearly a dozen years of No Child Left Behind and Race To The Top

Remember, back in the day, when all the talk was about leaving no child behind? Remember the NCLB mandate that ALL children will be proficient by 2014?

Now as the new year approaches, comes the news that 82% of Illinois school districts have failed to make the grade, up from 80% the year before. Even worse, 98% of Illinois high schools are now considered failing. That means only 11 out of Illinois’ 671 eligible high schools achieving the standard known as Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP).

Scores on state achievement tests barely budged in 2012 and graduation rates also dipped across the state, 

Letters to the Editor: San Francisco Chronicle « InterACT

Letters to the Editor: San Francisco Chronicle « InterACT:

Letters to the Editor: San Francisco Chronicle

by David B. Cohen

Downtown San Francisco (photo by the author)

Last week, the teachers unions in San Francisco and Oakland declined to support district applications for the latest round of Race to the Top grants, which will go directly to districts rather than to entire states.  I remain skeptical about this approach, both in terms of its potential failure as a driver of real and sustainable improvement, and also its heavy-handed federal intrusion into state and local policy.  (See “Duncan Seeks Cheap Conversions”).  As a subscriber to the San Francisco Chronicle, I knew what to expect: editorials blasting the teachers and unions, with barely a hint of acknowledgment about the reasons that these teachers associations followed the same route as associations in many other California cities.  I wrote two letters to the