Latest News and Comment from Education

Friday, May 31, 2013

LISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH 5-31-13 Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all:

Click on picture to Listen to Diane Ravitch



Kids Are Never Too Young to Learn to Make Money

EduShyster reports here about a charter school in Utah where the goal of schooling is commerce.
Starting in kindergarten, the curriculum is all about buying and selling:
“HighMark administrators are quick to point out that the school is not a pint-sized business school. Instead, key business concepts and principles are integrated into every aspect of the K-8 charter. For example, “a student wanting to become a dentist will learn about the marketing aspect of dentistry, the pros and cons of opening 

Does Anyone Care?

Two mothers meet at a rally to protest the school closings in Chicago. One mother shows the other her cell phone. It has pictures of children on it. It is a Facebook page.
The second mother explains, these children will be killed if they cross the line into another neighborhood. That’s my son’s picture. He has been marked to die.
She went to the police. They turned her away. She went to school authorities. No one could help her.

NYC Parent Explains Why Parents Dislike Bloomberg’s “Reforms”

This reader echoes a frequent complaint expressed by parents in New York City. Mayor Bloomberg’s choice program gives choice to schools, not students. Sometimes one wonders if he is literally aiming to drive middle-class parents out of the school system and into charters, which will rescue their children from schools that the Tweed gang neglected.
The reader explains her frustration:
“There is No School Choice – Disenfranchising Children and Parents in District 15
School choice is a hallmark of the Department of Education under the Bloomberg/Tweed regime in New York City. But last week with the arrival of middle school placement letters in District 15, Brooklyn, it was made painfully clear to everyone, the choice is not ours, but theirs. My son, along with other boys from our high 

Gary Rubinstein on the Changing of the Guard at TFA

Wendy Kopp stepped aside as CEO of Teach for America and will devote her time to leading the new international arm of TFA, an allied organization called Teach for All.
Teach for All will bring the TFA model to nations around the world.
Here, Gary Rubinstein checks out the personae of her successors.
One he calls the “bad Wendy Kopp,” the other he calls the “good Wendy Kopp.”
Read the tweets he collected. Tweets are often more telling about a person (if he or she writes their own) than long dissertations.


How Will inBloom Help Students and Schools?

As everyone’s personal, confidential information joins that big data warehouse in the Cloud, what are the gains? What are the losses?
A reader sends this comment:
**********************************
According to professor Jason Frand of UCLA Anderson School of Management:
http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/jason.frand/teacher/technologies/palace/datamining.htm
“Data mining consists of five major elements:
Extract, transform, and load transaction data

It’s Time to Get Mad

Adam Kirk Edgerton is mad. He is mad at President Obama because he acts like a Republican.
Edgerton runs the Upward Bound program at Salem State University in Massachusetts. His students are losing their scholarships. Many students are losing scholarships.
Edgerton writes:
” I woke up mad today because when it comes to education policy, there is little daylight between a national Democrat and a national Republican. Dismantling civil-rights era social programs and replacing them with market-based reforms is what truly brings President Obama and the Republicans together.”
He adds:
“What I will argue is this: a Democratic administration is deliberately funneling funds away from direct services to 

Diane in the Evening 5-30-13 Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

mike simpson at Big Education Ape - 4 hours ago
Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all: Where Is the Support for Our Children? by dianerav This teacher describes how the testing mania–the evil spawn of No Child Left Behind–has consumed his school without changing the odds against the students. They are still behind and certain to remain far behind. He writes: I teach fourth grade in a Philadelphia public school. Though the school has made AYP for the past two years, most of the students are not performing at grade level in math or reading. So, at this school, like most urban schools, the standardi... more »

Louisiana Educator: Four Senators Block Evaluation Changes

Louisiana Educator: Four Senators Block Evaluation Changes:

Four Senators Block Evaluation Changes

The vote for HB 160 in the House Education Committee was unanimous and the vote on the House floor was 102 to 0. But yesterday the vote in the Senate Education Committee was 4 to 3 to kill the bill. It was obvious that LABI  and the Jindal forces had done a simple math calculation and found that they needed only four votes to kill HB 160 and to move forward with fully implementation of the new Act 54 teacher evaluation system despite all of the flaws and potential for destruction of good teachers' careers. The following Senators voted with LABI and Jindal to kill HB 160: Conrad Appel of Jefferson,  Jack Donahue of St Tammany, Elbert Guillory of St Landry and North Lafayette, and Dan Claitor of Baton Rouge.

I want to emphasise that the great majority of the legislature knew that HB 160 was very much needed to restore some of the morale of the teaching profession that was so damaged by the ill conceived and poorly executed Act 54 plan,  probably the most punitive and error prone teacher evaluation system in U.S. Even the original author of Act 54, Rep. Hoffman , pleaded with the Senate Committee to adopt the carefully crafted compromise in HB 160 that would simply have delayed the most harmful parts of the new evaluation system. Rep Hoffman had made a commitment upon adoption of Act 54 that he would demand that the evaluation be halted if it was found to be 

Finding the Middle Ground on Bullying | LFA: Join The Conversation - Public School Insights

Finding the Middle Ground on Bullying | LFA: Join The Conversation - Public School Insights:

Finding the Middle Ground on Bullying

By Francisco M. Negrón, Jr., General Counsel/Associate Executive Director of the National School Boards Association (NSBA)
The one common thread from the many perspectives on school bullying is that advocates on all sides care deeply about kids. TheNational School Boards Association (NSBA) is determined to protect students' Constitutional rights and their rights to an education in a safe school environment. But those rights hold an inherent tension that at times collides.
So how can we find a middle ground?
We're encouraged by a set of guidelines that show ways public school students can safely share their views and engage in discussions about religious and political differences in environments that prohibit discrimination, bullying, and
read more

Students spend year studying Dracula but are tested on Frankenstein instead | toteachornototeach

Students spend year studying Dracula but are tested on Frankenstein instead | toteachornototeach:

Students spend year studying Dracula but are tested on Frankenstein instead

Fangs for nothing! Students spend a year studying
Dracula only to find out they should have been reading
Frankenstein two weeks before A-level exam


By John Stevens
For almost the whole  academic year, students at a sixth-form college pored over Bram Stoker’s classic horror story Dracula.
Then two weeks before their A-level English exam, they discovered that they should have been learning Frankenstein.
Their teacher had failed to notice that the syllabus changed at the start of the school year in September.
The teenagers at Newmarket College in Suffolk now face desperately having to cram the right text before the exam on Thursday.
Abbie Stallabrass, 18, said: ‘We just sat there stunned when our teacher told us. Dracula is one of three books 

The June Fight Over Student Loans

The June Fight Over Student Loans:

The June Fight Over Student Loans

Alaska is Bringing Common Core Through the Back Door | Truth in American Education

Alaska is Bringing Common Core Through the Back Door | Truth in American Education:

Alaska is Bringing Common Core Through the Back Door

Alaska-State-FlagAfter former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin said no to the Race to the Top money it looks like Alaska may end up with the Common Core State Standards anyway.
A reader emailed me to let me know that The Alaska Department of Education & Early Development recently announced that they have joined the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium after adopting new standards.  Below is their press release from April 19, 2013:
Alaska Joins Multi-State Assessment Consortium
JUNEAU – Following a recent adoption of new student standards, Alaska has chosen to join the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC), a state-led consortium developing assessments aligned to the Common Core State Standards. Because Alaska’s new standards in English/language arts and mathematics have been 

@ THE CHALK FACE knows SCHOOLS MATTER

@ THE CHALK FACE knows SCHOOLS MATTER:






Two Questions for Commissioner Deborah Gist

Commissioner Gist of Rhode Island has taken to the op-ed pages to defend standardized testing, going so far as to declare that Too often, standardized tests become a convenient stand-in for the ills of our education system. People frequently blame assessments for less-than-inspired teaching. Really? Is that your experience, Ms. Gist? If you ask the […]

Governor Chris Christie and Ed Commissioner Cerf Leaving NJ’s Children Behind

Funding for New Jersey’s public schools is falling behind and leaving lots of children left behind. After more than a decade of NCLB which was supposed to close the achievement gap, yeah right, Chris Christie and President Obama’s love fest this past week in boosting the tv ratings on the Jersey Shore, is little comfort […]

Parents Opt Out . . . of Student Eye Scanning

In the state that spawned Chiefs for Change (and Folding Cash), the education industrial complex just got hooked up with the homeland security and surveillance complex in Polk County.  Just as everyone was starting to believe that the Polk County Schools were working on an austerity basis with a twelve million dollar budget shortfall as […]

Return Philadelphia Schools to Local Control Rally Wed June 5th

Pennsylvania Education Crisis Highlights - May 31st, 2013 Philadelphia City Council Education Committee hearing on the return of the Philadelphia School District to local control Monday, June 3rd  10:00 a.m. People wanting to speak may sign up right before the meeting. Stand Together for real food and safe schools for our kids Rally: Wednesday, June 5th 4:00 p.m. […]

Denver Blacklisting Teachers Without Cause

Sign petition here All across the country, from coast to coast, even here in New Jersey, where we have had the best public school systems in the country, experienced teachers are being fired. Under the guise of a bad evaluation,  teachers in Denver are the latest victims and are being targeted despite years of teaching […]

Over a Half-Million Viewers Share Rubenstein’s Resignation Speech

Captured in 10 minutes here are so many of the truths known by teachers everywhere during these Dark Days. When teachers begin to speak this way while still employed, rather than as they walk out, only then will we see progress in rolling back the influence of the oligarchs to create a new breed of […]

Los Angeles public education events for the first weekend of June 2013

First published on solidaridad on May 30, 2013 Logan Street Elementary School Celebrates 125th Birthday Posted by Cheryl Ortega, May 23, 2013 at 10:46 am on Echo Park-Silver Lake Patch Saturday, June 1, 2013, 10:00 AM 1711 W. Montana Street Los Angeles, CA 90026 See previous entry for more photos In 1888 children came to Logan […]

@ THE CHALK FACE knows SCHOOLS MATTER 5-30-13 

mike simpson at Big Education Ape - 11 hours ago
@ THE CHALK FACE knows SCHOOLS MATTER: From “Surplussed” to “Excessed:” Dumped Memphis Teachers Go to Court by Jim Horn With the blessing of Bill Gates and State Commissioner, Kevin (formerly Mister Michelle Rhee) Huffman, principals across Memphis and Shelby County are illegally dumping hundreds of tenured teachers in favor of TFA, TeachPlus, and TeachMemphis corporate missionaries, who are hired to instill in Memphis’ impoverished children the corporate psychology that can be summed up as “you can […] Enough of the “I am a white person and I refuse to acknowledge the opportun... more »

Jeb Bush’s disdain for public education

Jeb Bush’s disdain for public education:

Jeb Bush’s disdain for public education

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush-AP Photo/El Nuevo Herald, Hector Gabino
Jeb Bush                                                                  (AP Photo/El Nuevo Herald, Hector Gabino)
It’s always useful to know where  people are coming from, so we can thank former Florida governor Jeb Bush for making it so easy to understand where he stands on public education. He has nothing but disdain for it.
If you think this is somehow an exaggeration, consider what Bush, a national education reform leader, has said recently about the subject. In his keynote speech this week at the Mackinac Policy Conference in northern Michigan, Bush said,according to the Huffington Post:
We must expand [school] choice. Our governance model includes over 13,000 government-run monopolies run by unions.
and
We can’t just outsource public education to bureaucracies and public education unions and hope for the best.

Mind you, Bush does support “outsourcing” public education to for-profit companies, as is evidenced by his longtime support for charter schools run by for-profit companies as well as private school vouchers paid for 

Five ways to improve literacy learning (that work better than high-stakes tests)

The following letter from Sandy Hayes, president of the National Council of Teachers of English to organization members, supports a moratorium on the high-stakes consequences of standardized tests aligned to the Common Core State Standards. American Federation of Teachers President … Continue reading →

Was the winning National Spelling Bee word too easy?

The winning word in the 2013 Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday night was, as it turned out, “knaidel,” a Jewish version of a dumpling.The boy who got it right — on his fourth successive appearance in the national event … Continue reading →

Daily Kos: Leaves on the Current - the progress continues

Daily Kos: Leaves on the Current - the progress continues:

Leaves on the Current - the progress continues

I did not post an update last Sunday because there was nothing knew to report about my wife's continued recovery from dealing with her blood cancer.  I am posting a bit early this week because I will be leaving this morning for a college reunion, so this seemed like an appropriate time.
This is her week off from chemotherapy.  Her last dose was taken Monday night.  Normally Tuesday and Wednesday of the off week have been her toughest days, with a beginning to return towards a calmer situation starting on Thursday.  But this week was somewhat different.
As those who follow me on Facebook or Twitter know, on Wednesday she not only worked a complete 10 hour day in her office, she worked some extra time as well.  Yesterday she also worked a complete day, and was actually in her office for longer, but was able to have a leisurely lunch with a co-worker.  I finally picked her up a bit after 9 PM, about 12 hours after I had dropped her off, and we celebrated a bit - she had a bowl of gazpacho at the National Democratic Club where I am a member, and since she was more than 48 hours away from 

UPDATE: Nekritz/Biss dies in the Illinois Senate. SB2404 on life support. One day to go. UPDATED. | Fred Klonsky

Nekritz/Biss dies in the Illinois Senate. SB2404 on life support. One day to go. UPDATED. | Fred Klonsky:

Reported here first. Springfield may vote to cut CPS pension contributions

As I reported here this morning, the final hours of the General Assembly may see a new attack on teacher pensions emerge. This time the target is the Chicago Teacher’s Pension Fund.
A source not only expressed concern about Senate Bill 1920, but also about the continued arrogance and hostility coming from the CPS board. There representatives reportedly walked away from the table in the middle of bargaining over board and teacher contributions to the fund.
Senate Bill 1920 would give CPS a $350 million pension holiday. 
The CTPF reports:
The 98th General Assembly adjourns today and we expect the legislature to vote on a recently introduced measure granting CPS more funding relief through House Amendment #2 to SB 1920.Details are just becoming available, but under the proposed legislation, the CPS contribution will be reduced to $350M in 2014 (from $612.7M) and $500M in 2015 (from $631.5). This amounts to more than $350M in relief for those two years.
Please e-mail or call legislators right now to let them know that CPS has already been granted $3.2 billion in funding “relief” and pension “holidays” since 1995. We can’t afford to let CPS repeat their past mistakes.
Tell your legislators to VOTE NO on House Amendment #2 to SB 1920.

Final day. Final calls.

k5651380

Final day. Final calls.
I received notice that there is a bill, SB1920, that negatively impacts the pensions of Chicago teachers. The concern is that it may include a pension holiday for the city on pension payment obligations. I have been told by reliable sources that in talks between the city and representatives of the Chicago Teachers Union over how best to resolve pension cost issues of concern to both sides, the city walked away from the table.
When calling your House and Senate representatives mention your opposition to SB1920.
There is also concern with attempts to strong-arm the Senate into reconsidering SB1 again today. Call and thank those who voted no and affirm your view that SB1 is unconstitutional and a breach of contractual obligations to state employee pensions.
Third is SB2404. Please call your House representative and tell them that in spite of what they may have heard, public employees oppose SB2404.
And finally there is the cost shift. A bill was passed yesterday that shifted pension costs of public university and college to the schools. Some suspect this will lay the groundwork for a broader pension cost shift from the state to local school districts. When you call, tell them you oppose a pension cost shift.

If there ever was a reason for SB2404 (there wasn’t), there’s no reason for it now.

The We Are One/Cullerton pension bill, SB2404 can still happen if Speaker Madigan brings it to the House floor today.
The justification behind a bill that would create a choice under duress between a cost of living adjustment to retiree benefits and health care was that it provided an alternative to the Nekritz/Biss/Madigan bill that was even worse.
While this was an incredibly bone-headed move by the leadership of the state’s public employee unions, there is 

Curriculum dialogue.

persepolis1
Thanks to John and Elizabeth and the Addison Public Library for inviting me to take part in a dialogue about the Persepolis Controversy last night.
It was a great evening.
Sandwiched between our conversation was a screenng of the award-winning animated film based on the graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi.
Persepolis only became controversial when CPS CEO Barabara Byrd-Bennett unilaterally banned it from CPS libraries, classrooms and from the hands of CPS students.
Our group at the library turned into an inter-generational conversation about the fundamental curricular questions:

Nekritz/Biss dies in the Illinois Senate. SB2404 on life support. One day to go. UPDATED.

nekritz
The Nekritz bill died last night.
At around 8PM last night the worst of the pension killing bills died in the Senate chamber of the Illinois Capitol building.
It died a brutal, bloody, decisive death.
It garnered only 16 votes.
42 Illinois senators voted for the Illinois Constitution and the contractual rights of public employees.
Senate President Cullerton voted for the bill, but that was only for show. He clearly had given his permission for 

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Pension thieves fall out once again. SB1 bombs in the Senate

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Pension thieves fall out once again. SB1 bombs in the Senate:

Pension thieves fall out once again. SB1 bombs in the Senate


Angry Boss Madigan stomped out of the Capitol after his SB1 pension bill blew up.  Points finger at Cullerton. 
If you're a retired teacher, living on fixed income, or struggling to make your health care payments, you can breathe a little easier -- at least for a few months. Boss Madigan's unconstitutional pension-busting bill, SB1, bombed in the Senate once again. It fell short by a 16-42 vote, despite an alliance between Madigan and the Republicans who came around after first complaining that the bill didn't go far enough.  Thank you, all those