Joy Resmovits: Bill Gates's Education Philanthropy Over Time; New York City Parents Sue Over School Funding: Ed Today

Joy Resmovits: Bill Gates's Education Philanthropy Over Time; New York City Parents Sue Over School Funding: Ed Today:

Bill Gates's Education Philanthropy Over Time; New York City Parents Sue Over School Funding: Ed Today

by Joy Resmovits

Gates's Gigantic Growth? Michigan State University Professor Sarah Reckhow takes a look at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's funding patterns over on Alexander Russo's blog. "The decade from 2000 to 2010 was a time of enormous growth and evolution for the Gates Foundation," Reckhow writes. "Warren Buffett's pledge of more than $30 billion substantially increased the Gates Foundation's resources, and grant-making more than doubled from 2005 to 2009. Even more marked are the Foundation's dramatically shifted priorities." Over the years, Gates has shifted its money from directly funding schools to instead subsidizing research, advocacy and activism.

New York Sued? Parents in New York City are suing Governor Andrew Cuomo and state schools chief John King for withholding money to the city's schools over a teacher evaluation standoff, reports the Wall Street Journal's Lisa Fleisher. The parents are represented by Michael Rebell, an attorney who previously got the state to spend more money on its schools through a case known as the Campaign for Fiscal Equity. "The fact that 

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: The growing revolt against testing madness

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: The growing revolt against testing madness:

The growing revolt against testing madness

by Mike Klonsky

Seattle NAACP announces support for test boycott.

The teachers revolt at Seattle's Garfield High has lit a spark that's growing into a prairie fire. Today is being called a National Day of Action to Support Seattle MAP Test Boycott.

The Seattle Times reports that despite Supt. Banda'sinsistence that widely criticized tests be given, angry parents are joining the revolt and pulling their kids out of the testing process. On Tuesday, only 97 of the roughly 400 ninth-graders who were supposed to take the MAP reading test did so. The other 300  had their parents’ permission to be excused.

Teachers say the tests’ margin of error is greater than the number of points that the average ninth-grader is expected to gain, th

Parents joining teachers’ test boycott as Garfield High principals give exam | Local News | The Seattle Times

Parents joining teachers’ test boycott as Garfield High principals give exam | Local News | The Seattle Times:

Parents joining teachers’ test boycott as Garfield High principals give exam

Seattle Superintendent José Banda has ordered Garfield High’s principal and assistant principals to give the tests that Garfield teachers have been protesting, but many students are opting out anyway.,

By Linda Shaw

Seattle Times education reporter

Seattle Schools Superintendent José Banda

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Under orders from Seattle Superintendent José Banda, the principal and assistant principals at Garfield High have started giving the district-required tests that Garfield teachers have been boycotting for nearly a month.

The move came after talks between Banda and the teachers ended in deadlock Monday, with teachers vowing to continue their protest of exams known as the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP), and Banda telling Garfield’s principal to administer the tests without teachers’ help.

Before Monday’s meeting, both sides had expressed hope that a compromise could be reached. But the meetings, although cordial, ended with an agreement to disagree.

Banda wanted teachers to suspend their boycott while a new task force reviews the district’s entire testing program. That task force, which is scheduled to start meeting Thursday, will include 

Is school reform making America less competitive?:

Is school reform making America less competitive?

Posted by Valerie Strauss on February 6, 2013 at 4:00 am

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Many school reformers say that their efforts are aimed at helping to improve schools so Americans can be competitive in the 21st Century economy. Here’s an argument saying that school reform is doing exactly the opposite, from David Bernstein, a nonprofit executive who lives in Gaithersburg, Md., and has two sons, ages 7 and 15.

By David Bernstein

The standard line of the current education reform movement goes as follows: We have broken schools that are producing underachieving students, causing U.S. students to lose ground to young people in other industrialized nations, thereby rendering America less competitive.

In reality, we have more than one problem in education, and, in trying to repair one, we are exacerbating another. In so doing, we are unwittingly making the United States less, not 

Is parent involvement in school really useful?

by Valerie Strauss

It’s one of those things in education that everybody takes for granted: parent involvement is good and necessary. But is it, and if so, what kind? Here is an analysis from Alfie Kohn, the author of 12 books about education …Continue reading →

The most expensive college alumni trips ever (probably)

by Valerie Strauss

I received in the mail a glossy travel brochure from the Northwestern Alumni Association with an offer to join a three-week trip to Africa and South America. The journey, called “Cape to Cape: An Expedition by Private Jet,” looked so … Continue reading →

UPDATE: Is the common core "an extraordinary opportunity" for libraries? Schools Matter: How the .01% will profit (and profit and profit) from the common core: It’s not the standards. It’s not the tests. It’s the online testing.

Schools Matter: How the .01% will profit (and profit and profit) from the common core: It’s not the standards. It’s not the tests. It’s the online testing.:

Chalkface Has It Right about Jon Stewart

by Jim Horn

I do not blame Jon Stewart for not being a policy wonk on education, but I do blame him for not asking the questions that have never been answered  

Questions For Michelle:  

• What do you hope to accomplish from your '"radical" project? 
• Who pays your salary, and who put up the money for Students First?  
• What is your connection to Jeb Bush and Forum for Educational Excellence?  
• Why were investigators of the DC cheating scandal not given orders to get to the bottom 

Is the common core "an extraordinary opportunity" for libraries?

by skrashen

Response to Publishers’ Weekly: Posted on
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/55831-for-libraries-the-common-core-presents-extraordinary-opportunity.html#comments

“…it is impossible, unnecessary, and harmful for a small group of individuals to predetermine and impose upon all students the same set of knowledge and skills and expect all students progress at the same pace (if the students don't, it is the teachers' and schools' fault).” Yong Zhao
http://zhaolearning.com/2013/01/17/more-questions-about-the-common-core-response-to-marc-tucker/

“For Libraries, the Common Core Presents Extraordinary Opportunity” presents a very incomplete view of the common core. Those parts of the common core that seem favorable to libraries do not require the common core. Left unsaid is that there is no evidence that establishing national standards and tests will help anybody, and plenty of evidence that the common core will damage not only libraries but all aspects of education. 

How the .01% will profit (and profit and profit) from the common core: It’s not the standards. It’s not the tests. It’s the online testing.

by skrashen

Longer version posted on New Jersey Spotlight, Feb 4, 2013, in reaction to: “Online Testing Is Coming to New Jersey Schools -- Ready or Not”
http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/13/02/03/online-testing-is-coming-to-new-jersey-schools-ready-or-not/

“ by the spring of 2015, close to 1 million students between Grades 3 and 11 are expected to sit at laptops or tablets taking their annual state math and language arts exams.

That will be no small technological feat for an education infrastructure that plays catch-up every year as it is.”

The Logic of "Reform" Hits a New Low

by John Thompson

ConnCAN's “The Roadmap to Closing the Gap” joins the pantheon of data-driven "reformers" who love to issue heads I win, tails you lose analyses of school reform.  It argues that the number of Connecticut students who lag behind their peers is surprisingly small.  So, that doable target requires radical change of the system!?!?

The Shanker Blog’s Matt DiCarlo, in “The Cartography of High Expectations” is always diplomatic to a fault, but even he blasts ConnCAN's tract as another example of “reformers” who cross “a point at which well-intentioned ratcheting up of the expectations rhetoric crosses the border from healthy urgency to counterproductive fantasy.” DiCarlo then dismantles their so-called methodology.  It takes a snapshot of the modest number of Connecticut students who are seriously behind their peers.  Illogically, ConnCAN’s low numbers (2% of the state students 

Chicago Public School parents Joining National Day of Action to Support Seattle MAP Test Boycott « Seattle Education

Chicago Public School parents Joining National Day of Action to Support Seattle MAP Test Boycott « Seattle Education:

Chicago Public School parents Joining National Day of Action to Support Seattle MAP Test Boycott

by seattleducation2011

February 6 is the National Day of Action to Support Seattle MAP Test Boycott.

Parents from at least 34 Chicago Public Schools (CPS) will be passing petitions opposing the misuse and overuse of tests in CPS.

The petitions ask CPS and the Chicago Board of Education to limit standardized testing and provide more transparency about the cost, amount and stakes of the 22 tests now being used in the district. We intend to present these petitions to the Board in the near future.

The petition was written by parents and others frustrated with the scale, expense, and consequences of the testing regime in CPS. We do not feel as though the CPS administration is currently addressing our concerns. We hope our campaign is a wake-up call to the Board of Education and the leadership of the Chicago Public Schools that parents, students. teachers and community members will no longer accept the status 

UPDATE: Madigan won’t divulge his + Bernie Madoff for financial advice? + New feature: Springfield’s Biggest Loser Legislator of the Week. + A retired teacher supports the faculty at Garfield High School in Seattle. Wearing red today. « Fred Klonsky

A retired teacher supports the faculty at Garfield High School in Seattle. Wearing red today. « Fred Klonsky:

Madigan won’t divulge his email. Tomorrow you must phone or fax.

by Fred Klonsky

Reminder that tomorrow is Call Madigan Friday.
The message: You must meat with the unions for real pension solutions.
But the speaker will not divulge his email address.
I even called his Springfield office:
“Speaker’s office.”
“Hi. Does the Speaker have an email address?”
“No.”
Click.
So you must call or fax.

Springfield Office: 300 Capitol Building Springfield, IL   62706 (217) 782-5350 (217) 524-1794 FAX District Office: 6500 South Pulaski Road Chicago, IL  60629 (773) 581-8000 (773) 581-9414 FAX

Standard and Poor’s and Illinois pensions. Would you go to Bernie Madoff for financial advice?

by Fred Klonsky

The big financial news yesterday was the release of documents by the Justice Department showing that the Standard and Poors fraudulently inflated credit ratings, “with dire consequences for the entire economy. In a series of e-mails, tensions appeared to be escalating inside the firm’s headquarters in Lower Manhattan as it publicly professed that its ratings were valid, even as the home loans bundled into mortgage-backed securities, or M.B.S., were failing at accelerating rates.”
Standard and Poor’s is not a government agency. They are a private company which is hired to assess deals, trades, the value of securities and bonds.
All they have to sell really is their reliability.
The Feds and 16 state attorneys general claim that they were

New feature: Springfield’s Biggest Loser Legislator of the Week.

by Fred Klonsky

Attending the pension forum in Wilmette on Monday night, listening to Senator Dan Biss and Representative Gabel claim that teacher pensions were at fault for “draining money from poor children,” I thought to myself, “Fred, you need a new feature for your blog: Springfield’s Biggest Loser legislator of the week.“
It will be a problem because there are so many who are competitive.
IEA Government Relations, the union lobbyists, won’t be happy with this because we are suppose to smile and be nice to all of these folks, no matter what they do, what they say or how they vote.
IPACE, our political action fund, has been throwing money at Republican House Leader Tom Cross for years. No 

A retired teacher supports the faculty at Garfield High School in Seattle. Wearing red today.

by Fred Klonsky

I now have quite a collection of red shirts to wear in support of public education.
I used to wear one every Tuesday.
But now I’m retired. And today we are being asked to wear read in support of the teachers at Garfield High School. They put the interests of their students first and have refused to waste precious instructional and class time on the MAP test.
I won’t be wearing red today to school. But I’ll be wearing red just the same.

West Chicago teachers still out. VIDEO

by Fred Klonsky

Popout

Daily Kos: Another sign of what is wrong in public education

Daily Kos: Another sign of what is wrong in public education:

Another sign of what is wrong in public education

by rss@dailykos.com (teacherken)

is the desperate need for money as local and state governments either see tax revenues dropping (from depressed house prices and sales taxes or from deliberate attempts to starve revenues as Republicans slash tax rates on corporations and the wealthy).  We have seen schools and districts selling naming rights to football stadiums, we have seen charging of fees for participation in athletics and other extracurricular activities.
This week the system in which I taught for 17 years before retiring in June went a step further, as we learned in aWashington Post story titled Prince George’s considers copyright policy that takes ownership of students’ work
The article begins as follows:

A proposal by the Prince George’s County Board of Education to copyright work created by staff and students for school could mean that a picture drawn by a first-grader, a lesson plan developed by a teacher or an app created by a teen would belong to the school system, not the individual.

I will not quote extensively from the article.  I want to discuss separately the two issues

Reflections on Teaching » Blog Archive » Week 19 2013: Public Speaking

Reflections on Teaching » Blog Archive » Week 19 2013: Public Speaking:

Week 19 2013: Public Speaking

by alicemercer

For reasons I’m not going to go into, many of my plans for the classroom did not come to fruition. The one lesson I did manage to teach my students though, was just FABULOUS!
First, I must thank Andrew Dlugan at the Six Minutes site. This site is a great resource on public speaking and presentations for adults, but much of the material is accessible enough to use with older children (10+ years) with some modification. I wanted to prepare students to create and deliver persuasive speeches. To do this, I looked for resources on the three elements of persuasion; ethos, pathos, and logos. The article at Six Minutesseemed the best for my purposes. I asked some questions , and Mr. Dlugan contacted me via email when he heard about what I was planning to do. I found him to be quite helpful, and generous in his materials. I did end up re-writing a bit to make the language more accessible to my students, and to give them time for a response so I could check their understanding.
Here was what I came up with for a slide-deck:

Rhetoric and public speaking from Alice Mercer

Some other parts that I added were, between the Ethos and Pathos slides, I showed students video of former 

Independent Report: Teachers Remain Skeptical About New Evaluation System - NJ Spotlight

Independent Report: Teachers Remain Skeptical About New Evaluation System - NJ Spotlight:

Independent Report: Teachers Remain Skeptical About New Evaluation System

Study also raises concerns about deadlines and reliability, but lead author finds reasons to be optimistic

 print | email | share

By John Mooney, February 6, 2013 in Education |Post a Comment

With less than nine months and counting, New Jersey’s rollout of a statewide teacher evaluation system is moving ahead, but the deadlines are tight, reliability remains an issue -- and the system has yet to win the confidence of the teachers it's intended to evaluate.

Related Links

Rutgers: New Jersey Teacher Evaluation, Year 1 Report

Evaluation Pilot Advisory Committee Internal Report

That was the bottom line of a sweeping report by a team of Rutgers researchers that is following the early implementation of the system.

According to the state’s new tenure law, every district must have a revamped evaluation system in place by next school year.

The cautions and caveats of the report were tempered by the fact that the study was only looking at the first 10 pilot districts in their first year (2011-2012). Another 20 districts are in a second-year pilot that will be reported on this summer.

The report also did not delve into a central piece of the new process: the use of student

NJSpotlight (http://s.tt/1zr1E)

NYC Educator: The Making of a Supervisor

NYC Educator: The Making of a Supervisor:

The Making of a Supervisor

by NYC Educator

by Recovering ATR 

I have a friend who I've written about before on this blog. He is putting the finishing touches on getting his AP license. We've continued our oddball opposites attract friendship. Since I knew him ever since he was a first year teacher, it's interesting to see him "develop" into a supervisor-to-be.

In order to finish his internship he was sent to some large school in January to oversee Regents grading, with the new system and whatnot. He was supposed to be monitoring the teachers' grading to make sure that we weren't cheating or doing any other funky stuff.

During this time he sent me a series of text messages 

Scrap the MAP! Webinar with Garfield High School Teachers

Scrap the MAP! Webinar with Garfield High School Teachers:

Scrap the MAP! Webinar with Garfield High School Teachers

by Server

Support High Stakes Test Resistance

SCRAP THE MAP! WEBINAR WITH GARFIELD HIGH SCHOOL TEACHERS
Originally Posted on February 5, 2013
Support High Stakes Test Resistance—Scrap the MAP!
Webinar with Garfield High School Teachers:
Why they did it, How they did it, Where the struggle is headed next.
Earlier this month, teachers at Garfield High School in Seattle, Washington, voted unanimously to stop administering a widely used, yet highly unfair standardized test. They are now facing threats of 10-day suspension without pay if they continue their boycott. Students and parents are joining the struggle in defense of their teachers and their right to a quality education.
The outcome of this grassroots movement will have an enormous impact on the future of resistance to high stakes testing around the country. Their struggle is our struggle!
Join with other concerned teachers, parents, and activists around the country for a free webinar featuring Jesse Hagopian, Garfield teacher and alumnus, as he discusses the background and current state of the fight to Scrap The Map. This will be an interactive, online meeting, with an opportunity for participants to ask questions. This webinar will be moderated by Brian Jones, teacher, author, and educational justice activist from NYC.
Webinar
Sunday, Feb. 10
5pm PST, 6pm MST, 7pm CST, 8pm EST
You must register via email to receive an invitation to the webinar: Write to garfieldteacherswebinar@gmail.comYou will then receive a link to the webinar and easy technical directions for utilizing the free, online, web meeting service.
Learn more about the struggle of the Garfield Teachers at http://scrapthemap.wordpress.com
The courageous Boycott of the MAP test by Seattle teachers has inspired students, teachers, parents, and activists across the country. They have shown their solidarity through resolutions of support by teacher unions (by both the ATF & NEA), letters and emails to district officials, rallies, petition drives, and many other local actions. (See a full list of statements here http://scrapthemap.wordpress.com/solidarity-statements-2/)

“Without question or hesitation, I stand with the teachers, students, and parents at Garfield HS as they resist these unjust, soul-crushing standardized tests. This is not a Garfield issue. It’s a discussion in every public high school across the United States. We should all applaud and raise our fists for the people at Garfield and remember them forever as the first to stand up.” – 1968 Olympic medalist and protestor, Dr. John W. Carlos