MORNING UPDATE: LISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH 1-30-13 Diane Ravitch's blog

Diane Ravitch's blog:

If I Were Secretary of Education…..(1)

by dianerav

In response to another post, asking what would you do if you were Secretary of Education:
If I were the Secretary of Education, I would take all the
money being spent on testing and use a good portion of it to hire
aids, reading specialists, nurses, librarians, and all the other
support staff needed to truly serve the needs of a school.
School boards would consist of teachers and parents.

Walton Foundation Awards $158 Million for Privatization

by dianerav

The Walton Family Foundation has many billions of dollars. Though not as big as the Gates Foundation, it is one of the biggest three donors to education today. (The third billionaire foundation is the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation.) All three of these foundations support charter schools, testing, and choice.
Of the three, the Walton Foundation is the most conservative. It has a strong preference for free-market and libertarian policies. Last year, it handed out $159 million in education grants. This year, $158 million.
Here is their list of winners for 2012.
The Walton Foundation is built on the fortune produced by the Walmart stores. Walmart is not a friend to Main Street, and the Walton Foundation is not a friend to community public schools. The foundation, like its stores, 

Reader: How I Scored the FCAT Tests

by dianerav

A reader explains what happened when she was hired to score the FCAT:

My first job out of college in 2001 was scoring 8th grade FCAT essays. We made $10/hour in a small office building in Arizona, and we churned out scored tests like Big Macs.
Sometimes the bossmen would test our overall consistency by having us score the same writing sample. One of these samples blew me away with its creativity and control of language. It had definite boy’s handwriting and was 

Mercedes Schneider Investigates NCTQ Letter Grades: Part 1

by dianerav

Yet another national report from another reformer group, grading the states that meet their definition of what ought to be done.
Here, Mercedes Schneider, a Louisiana teacher with a Ph.D. in statistics and research methods, dissects the

Heilig to KIPP: Just Tell the Truth

by dianerav

Julian Vasquez Heilg has started a series that follows the money.
Previous entries looked at Sandy Kress, the advocate for high-stakes testing and lobbyist for Pearson, andTeach for America.
In this entry, he takes KIPP to task for understating what it spends per pupil. He relies on public data. He calls on KIPP to be a “little more honest.”

Another Chance to Investigate D.C. Cheating

by dianerav

There have been two official investigations of allegations of cheating in the public schools of the District of Columbia during the tenure of Michelle Rhee. Neither of them found any evidence of widespread cheating, yet many questions remain, including questions about the depth and scope and basic competency of the two official investigations.
USA Today first reported the extraordinary erasure rates in at least half the D.C. Public schools. In addition to the striking number of answers that were changed from wrong to right, there were a large number of schools

Good News! Students in Portland, Oregon, Are Speaking Out

by dianerav

High school students in Portland, Oregon, are organizing to fight high-stakes testing.
From their statement:
“The PPS and Portland Student Unions will be teaming up in organizing an Opt-Out Campaign in which students are encouraged to opt-out of taking their standardized OAKS tests. The Student Unions want to send a strong message against to the standardized testing system as we believe that standardized tests scores are an inaccurate depiction of a student’s knowledge, have an extremely high correlation to a student’s family’s income, have a high correlation with race, are expensive, and in all are taking up class time that we could use learning 

Diane in the Evening 1-29-13 Diane Ravitch's blog

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 5 hours ago

Diane Ravitch's blog: Florida’s Nutty Accountability System by dianerav Between the two Bush brothers–George W. and Jeb–the nation’s education system is locked into a regime of endless testing, grading, evaluating, marking, measuring, etc. It doesn’t seem to get us very far. After all, Texas has been in this business for as long as anyone can Australian Educators Thank Garfield Teachers by dianerav Our compatriots in Australia are watching the growing rebellion against high-stakes testing with interest and hope. They are impressed by the courage and unity of teachers at Garfi... more »

Missouri Education Watchdog: NSBA Pushes Back Against Arne Duncan but Supports Common Core Standards?

Missouri Education Watchdog: NSBA Pushes Back Against Arne Duncan but Supports Common Core Standards?:

NSBA Pushes Back Against Arne Duncan but Supports Common Core Standards?

by stlgretchen

National School Board Association issues press release:

Alexandria, Va. (Jan. 29, 2013) – More than 700 school board members and state school boards association leaders will be meeting with their members of Congress and urging them to co-sponsor legislation, developed by the National School Boards Association (NSBA), to protect local school district governance from unnecessary and counter-productive federal intrusion from the U.S. Department of Education. 

...“We must ensure that the decisions made at the federal level will best support the needs and goals of local school systems and the communities they serve,” said Gentzel. “Local school boards must have the ability to make on-the-ground decisions that serve the best interests of our school districts.”

The NSBA is pushing back against Arne Duncan's policies mandating school district policies.   It has prepared draft legislation stopping the increasing Federal encroachment into local districts and states:

Cut services, borrow money: Connecticut State Budget Day - Wait, What?

Cut services, borrow money: Connecticut State Budget Day - Wait, What?:

Cut services, borrow money: Connecticut State Budget Day

It is budget day in Connecticut, the day Governor Malloy goes before a joint session of the Connecticut General Assembly to present his proposed budget for the next two fiscal years.

A clear, concise snapshot of the “state of the state” can be seen through the CTNewsjunkie story that was posted late last night.

Governor To Announce New Nonprofit Funding Initiative

“Less than 24 hours before the state’s nonprofit community providers were to rally Wednesday morning to draw attention to an “already frayed safety net,” Gov. Dannel P. Malloy announced a new plan to help fund their efforts.

According to sources, Malloy plans to join them at the rally to announce plans to establish a new state bond pool specifically designated for nonprofit community-based providers. The $20 million pool is expected to enhance opportunities by allowing nonprofits 

State ordered to pay back districts $1 billion for 20-year-old mandate | EdSource Today

State ordered to pay back districts $1 billion for 20-year-old mandate | EdSource Today:

State ordered to pay back districts $1 billion for 20-year-old mandate

January 30th, 2013 | Add a Comment | 
By John Fensterwald

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A state commission has ruled that the state must reimburse school districts about $1 billion in mandated special education costs dating back 20 years. But like many protracted mandate cases, the victory is largely one of principle. Gov. Jerry Brown is proposing to include a small payback in next year’s budget, and the dollars will come from funding within Proposition 98, so it will essentially involve shifting education dollars around.

The unreimbursed expenses are for intervention plans for special education students identified with behavior problems. In the early 1990s the State Board of Education, under orders from the Legislature, prescribed interventions that teachers should incorporate into individual education 

Report ranks California’s charter school laws 7th strongest in nation - by Susan Frey

by Susan Frey

The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools ranked California 7th for its charter school laws among the 42 states and the District of Columbia that have passed laws allowing charter schools. For the past four years, the alliance has compared the strength of each state’s charter laws with its own model law, which includes measurements of quality and accountability, equitable access to...

Uncertainty and unknowns beneath the gloss of Common Core - by Peter Schrag

by Peter Schrag

Listening to the people at the State Department of Education who are charged with California’s transition to the new Common Core K-12 learning standards, as I did (twice) earlier this month, you’d have to conclude that it’s all going pretty well. Everything’s on schedule, local districts are moving ahead to “varying degrees” to get ready, teachers are champing at the bit to be liberated from the...

Ed Notes Online: Susan Ohanian lays bare the roots of ed deform going back to the Clintons

Ed Notes Online: Susan Ohanian lays bare the roots of ed deform going back to the Clintons:

Susan Ohanian lays bare the roots of ed deform going back to the Clintons

by ed notes online

History counts my chickadees, so if you want to understand the roots of ed deform read this entirely through. Susan doesn't get into the role Shanker and the union played in supporting so much of this as outlined in the Kahlenberg bio - which Kahlenberg paints as a good thing --- no wonder both the UFT/AFT and Broad backed the book. Thus when people accuse Randi of changing the direction of the union and that Shanker would roll over, they are wrong. Randi just continued the line with refinements that Shanker laid down.

I met Susan when I and John Lawhead went down to Birmingham Al for a conference Susan helped organize to fight NCLB and those few days with a great crew of activists were very important in my development. I didn't see Susan again until SOS 2011 in DC and hope to see her on her next visit for a speaking engagement on May 4.

Goals 2000: What's in a Name? 
More than a decade after President Bush the Elder and the nation's governors adopted goals for 

School Tech Connect: A Note About Marketing

School Tech Connect: A Note About Marketing:

A Note About Marketing

by noreply@blogger.com (Tim Furman)

Our research, marketing and brand-building tools help clients navigate to their desired destinations every step of the way.  - Loran Marketing

Listen, parents. If you find yourself being shunted off into a room to talk to a marketing person about keeping your neighborhood school closing, the thing you have to remember is this:

You're not the client. You're the obstacle the client has to overcome. All of your complaints, your concerns, your from-the-heart advocacy for a concept that suburban people take for granted---- that's all being distilled into themes, patterns, and hot-button words so that the client, Rahm Emanuel, can persuade you that he's your daddy and that you need him.

Marketing people can be very, very good at what they do. Marketing people pull things out of the fire even when 

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Latest Chicago gun deaths. Communities in distress.

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Latest Chicago gun deaths. Communities in distress.:

Latest Chicago gun deaths. Communities in distress.

by Mike Klonsky

"He hits the one that hurts the most to lose,” said Chicago Police Officer Damon Stewart, 36, Hadiya ’s godfather. “I changed her diapers, I played with her growing up. My heart is broken.”

Isolated and racially segregated neighborhoods in economic distress. Schools, medical and mental health facilities facing closure. The lives and family situations of thousands of mainly black and Latino youth in disarray and being further destabilized by city, county and state policies and budget cuts. Add in the easy availability of guns and you have some clues about why we're losing so many young people to the violence of Chicago streets.

There were seven murders from gunshots and other causes from 6 p.m. Friday until 12:01 a.m. Monday , 

The Vietnamization of public education:

The Vietnamization of public education

Posted by Valerie Strauss on January 30, 2013 at 6:00 am

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Here’s an interesting look at the false metrics of success that characterized the Vietnam War, and now, school reform, by Steve Cohen, a senior lecturer in education at Tufts University.

By Steve Cohen

I have been reading a new book, “The Generals,” byTom Ricks.  He looks at individual American military leaders from World War II until the present day and offers thumbnail sketches of their successes and failures. Ricks also made some interesting points about the changes in personnel policy in the military over time.  One of his arguments was a critique of common practice in the late 1950s and leading into the Vietnam Era when the Army decided to rotate officers to provide them with more and varied experiences.  This, of course, led to the phenomenon in Vietnam when officers, like the soldiers they led, served 

Teacher: How my 9th graders graded me

by Valerie Strauss

Some confident teachers allow their students to evaluate their performance at the end of each semester, believing they can learn the assessments how to improve. Here’s a report from one teacher who let ninth graders evaluate his teaching over the … Continue reading →

Bush Foundation “staff acted to promote their corporate funders’ priorities” | Scathing Purple Musings

Bush Foundation “staff acted to promote their corporate funders’ priorities” | Scathing Purple Musings:

Bush Foundation “staff acted to promote their corporate funders’ priorities”

by Bob Sikes

Florida’s mainstream media have been poking around the embers of the relationship between Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education and it’s corporate sponsors. Orlando Sentinel  reporter Leslie Postal reports that a government watchdog group will releasing emails which “paint a graphic picture of corporate money distorting democracy.”

The group In the Public Interest plans to detail tomorrow how former Gov. Jeb Bush’s influential educational foundation is “writing state education laws and regulations in ways that could benefit its corporate funders.”
The group is to detail its findings to reporters Wednesday, with two Orlando mothers from the group Fund Education Now taking part in the press call. A Louisiana parent from the national group 

Uncertainty in School Reform: The Untold Story | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Uncertainty in School Reform: The Untold Story | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Uncertainty in School Reform: The Untold Story

by larrycuban

Listen to Michael Mann, a climatolgist at Penn State University who talked about the science behind global warming and rising sea levels.
Any honest assessment of the science is going to recognize that there are things we understand pretty darn well and things that we sort of know. But there are things that are uncertain and there are things we just have no idea about whatsoever. (Nate Silver, The Signal and the Noise, 2012, p. 409).
Ah, if only federal and state policymakers, researchers, and reform-minded educators would see the “science” of school reform in K-12 and higher education in similar terms. “Science” is in quote marks because there is no reliable, much less valid, theory of school reform that can predict events or improvements in schools and 

UPDATE: Fred Klonsky CPS under federal investigation for civil rights violations + John Dillon: Perhaps there are other voices besides the extremists. « Fred Klonsky

John Dillon: Perhaps there are other voices besides the extremists. « Fred Klonsky:

Chicago Public Schools under federal investigation for civil rights violations in school closings.

by Fred Klonsky

From WBEZ:

National education officials are investigating how Chicago Public Schools has handled closing schools in recent years.
A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Education confirmed Tuesday that CPS is one of six urban school districts being investigated by the department’s Office of Civil Rights. School 

John Dillon: Perhaps there are other voices besides the extremists.

by Fred Klonsky

From John Dillon’s blog:

What We Are One and what the petition desires are not so very different: to call attention to serious long-term answers to the revenue crisis in Illinois, and to demand that the General Assembly address the problem without breaking the contractual agreements made to all in the public sector who have given what was asked – in work and in payment.  In the last week, proposals by Representative Naomi Jakobsson and Representative  Linda Chapa La Via for a graduated income tax (HJRCA0002) may perhaps demonstrate a first legislative recognition that revenue is both the problem and the answer.  Last spring, I listened to the Representative Bill Cunningham, Representative Kelly Burke, and Representative Mary Flowers endorse their own beliefs that a graduated income tax was necessary in the near future to help Illinois move forward 

Ten minute drawing. Jerry Garcia.

by Fred Klonsky

Click on image to enlarge.

My old stalker pal Ben Velderman. Still looking weird after all these years.

New readers to this blog may not know about my stalker Ben Velderman.

Let me do a quick recap.

A couple of years ago when I was still employed as a teacher in Park Ridge District 64 – back before my days as a retiree pension activist – a little cult of right-wing yahoos in Western Michigan called the Education Action Group filed a Freedom of Information Act request for all my work emails and my personnel file.

Why? Because I was an activist, unionist and widely read education blogger and they wanted to shut me up.

The EAG is grandly misnamed. They have little to do with Education. Their action 

Gates-Financed Common Core Standards Turn Kindergarten into Global Economy Zone - DailyCensored.com - Breaking Censored News, World, Independent, Liberal News

Gates-Financed Common Core Standards Turn Kindergarten into Global Economy Zone - DailyCensored.com - Breaking Censored News, World, Independent, Liberal News:

Gates-Financed Common Core Standards Turn Kindergarten into Global Economy Zone

by Susan Ohanian

The  Council of Great City Schools (CGCS) promotes a video From the Page to the Classroom: Implementing the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in English Language Arts and Literacythat purports to supply the background for the Common Core State (sic) Standards.  There’s no mention that The Council of Great City Schools has, so far, received $8,496,854 from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to promote these standards.

In delivering on its mission, the 52-minute CGCS video features the usual suspects—Common Core architect and now head of the College Board David Coleman, David Liben  and Sandra Alberti of Student Achievement Partners, a group co-founded by David Coleman and heftily funded by  the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation ($6,533,350) and the General Electric Foundation ($18,000,000) , and Michael Casserly, Executive Director of CGCS. Professor of education at the Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley,  Lily Wong Filmore makes a brief appearance to explain the rationale for a kindergarten on complex text. More about this later.

The film is narrated by Frederick Secrease, who, in an audience-ingratiating move, starts out by saying, “Like you, I am an educator” 

Teaching Career Pathways: Peer Evaluation « InterACT

Teaching Career Pathways: Peer Evaluation « InterACT:

Teaching Career Pathways: Peer Evaluation

by David B. Cohen

Note: in November 2012, Accomplished California Teachers (ACT) released the policy report “Promoting Quality Teaching: New Approaches to Compensation and Career Pathways.”  The following post is the third in a series of profiles showing how California teacher leaders are beginning to develop and follow diversified career pathways.  California teachers, and our peers around the nation, are looking for opportunities to innovate and lead in our field, but without having to leave the classroom.  Our argument is that educational leadership will improve the more its carried out by those still in the classroom, and that students will benefit from having more accomplished educators remaining the in classroom rather than taking on entirely non-teaching positions.
This profile focuses on the peer evaluation program at San Juan Unified School District.  Similar to the Algebra Success Project described in a prior blog post, this program has already been recognized as an exemplary 

LAUSD'S "RESPONSIBLE" ADMINISTRATORS AND THEIR TOADY TEACHER PERVERTS GET A PASS, WHILE INNOCENT TEACHERS GET SCREWED - Perdaily.com

LAUSD'S "RESPONSIBLE" ADMINISTRATORS AND THEIR TOADY TEACHER PERVERTS GET A PASS, WHILE INNOCENT TEACHERS GET SCREWED - Perdaily.com:

LAUSD'S "RESPONSIBLE" ADMINISTRATORS AND THEIR TOADY TEACHER PERVERTS GET A PASS, WHILE INNOCENT TEACHERS GET SCREWED

by Leonard Isenberg

(Mensaje se repite en Español)

Robert Pimental was arrested Wednesday, January 23, 2013 for sexual abuse of up to 20 children while he served as a teacher at George De La Torre Jr. Elementary School in Wilmington, CA. Authorities allege that Pimental inappropriately touched the children over and underneath their clothing. Authorities began their investigation last March after several children complained of his inappropriate touching. Pimental is also accused of touching an adult co-worker at the school in Wilmington.

Superintendent John Deasy removed the teacher from the school around the same time in March, 2012 after