Davis takes office as Washington Teachers Union president - The Washington Post

Davis takes office as Washington Teachers Union president - The Washington Post:

Davis takes office as Washington Teachers Union president

Davis (left), Peterson (middle) & Education Advocates @ first WTU Listening Post

By Emma Brown, Thursday, August 1, 2:52 PM E-mail the writer

It’s official: Elizabeth Davis is the new president of the Washington Teachers Union and will lead contract negotiations on behalf of 4,000 D.C. teachers.

Davis took office Thursday after unseating incumbent Nathan Saunders in a runoff election last month. Saunders appealed that result in an effort to hold onto his seat, but has now withdrawn his challenge, he wrote in a farewell letter to union members Wednesday.

More news about education

Davis takes office as Washington Teachers Union president

Emma Brown 2:52 PM ET

Elizabeth Davis will lead contract negotiations for 4,000 D.C. teachers.

Fairfax student charged with setting fire in school bathroom

T. Rees Shapiro 1:12 PM ET

No one was injured by the small blaze at West Potomac High near Alexandria.

Walton foundation pumps $20 million into Teach for America

Lyndsey Layton JUL 31

D.C. among nine cities to receive more TFA recruits over the next two years.

Read more

“You have made a choice which I shall respect despite some technical nuances,” Saunders wrote, adding that given the challenges the union faces — including an existential threat from the closure of traditional schools and the rapid growth of charters — “leadership is primary and who provides it is secondary.”

Saunders chided his colleagues for apathetic involvement in union issues, a problem he said is symbolized by low turnout in the union election. Of 4,000 teachers, only 65 percent, or about 2,600, are full dues-paying members and therefore eligible to vote, he 

8-1-13 Ed Notes Online

Ed Notes Online:

CORPORATE ED REFORM

NYC Supervisor: Barbara Morgan is getting what she deserves

I said "Ms. Morgan you work for the DOE what the hell are you doing here defending [Moskwitz]?! She steals money from our public schools by opening non-unionized charter schools which profit off our kids." ... NYC PrincipalOops! Did it again. Don't open your twitter.   This just in from a school principal in response to our Weiner press chief Barbara Morgan post (Unflappable Weiner Press Spokesper

by ed notes online / 50min  

7-31-13 Ed Notes Online

Ed Notes Online: Unflappable Weiner Press Spokesperson Barbara Morgan FlapsBack in the summer of 2009 I first met Barbara Morgan at a rally at PS 123 in Harlem protesting the Eva invasion. She introduced herself claiming she was an ed notes reader. She was working at the NYCDOE for Joel Klein chief flack David Cantor. At one point I offered her (and David) jobs representing Ed Notes so they could

by mike simpson / 17h 

Indiana's super connections | The Journal Gazette #cheats4change

Indiana's super connections | The Journal Gazette:

Indiana's super connections

Karen Francisco | The Journal Gazette

Plenty of education observers have pointed out State Superintendent Tony Bennett's enthusiastic and unquestioning support for charter schools and his wife's job as a school improvement consultant for the Indiana Public Charter Schools Association. Tina Bennett, a former school principal in Clark County, landed the job after her husband was elected to the state's top school post.
But there's now another interesting connection between the Indiana Department of Education and the superintendent's wife. Tina Bennett supervises the Teach for America program at Marian University, which just landed a $500,000 contract from the DOE to run a program to train principals for turnaround schools.
A DOE spokeswoman told the Indianapolis Star that Tina Bennett had no involvement in developing the program at the university, which has an enrollment of about 1,800 full- and part-time students.
Last month, the DOE announced the award of $15.5 million in School Improvement Grants to four of the state's lowest-achieving schools. Two of the four 

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

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

Bob Sidle in Florida: Bennett Resigns, Angrily

At his resignation press conference, Tony Bennett said the stories in the media about his actions in Indiana were “malicious and unfounded.” He said that Governor Rick Scott and powerbroker Jeb Bush wanted him to stay, but he didn’t want anything to distract from educating the kids of Florida. Bob Sidle, who reported the story in his blog, wondered why Bennett was so quick to resign: “Bennett’s qu

by dianerav / 2h 

Three Dubious Uses of Technology in Education

I was invited to contribute an article of 500 words to a special issue of Scientific American. I assumed that most of the other articles would be unalloyed cheerleading for the wonders of technology. So I decided to talk about both the promise and the perils of technology. I have seen teachers doing amazing things with the Internet. I have gone to conferences where thousands of teachers were lear

by dianerav / 1h 

Tony Bennett’s Wife Works for Charter Schools, USA

As state superintendent in Indiana, according to this news story, Tony Bennett sent a lot of business to Charter Schools USA. When Bennett moved to Florida, his wife got a job with Charter Schools, USA. Whether she was qualified is irrelevant. Public officials should not only avoid conflicts of interest but the appearance of a conflict of interest. If Florida has any ethical standards, this situat

by dianerav / 1h 

  E4E Gets $3 Million from Gates

A couple of years ago, I was on a panel discussion about school reform in NYC. To one side of me was a young man of maybe 23 or 24 who was remarkable. He knew everything. He had taught for 18 months and had learned everything there was to know about teaching and how to reform schools. I should have been impressed, but found his arrogance annoying. He was representing a group of other young teacher

by dianerav / 56min 

LISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH 8-1-13 Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all: Tennessee Parents Create Facebook Page “Remove Kevin Huffman”A group of Tennessee moms created a brilliant Facebook page calling for the removal of Kevin Huffman, the state education commissioner. The site is vivid, graphic, and highly charged with the fury of really angry moms. One entry points out that Huffman likes to say that K

by mike simpson / 2h 

Me and Anti-Reform (Part III of. . .) | Crazy Crawfish's Blog

Me and Anti-Reform (Part III of. . .) | Crazy Crawfish's Blog:

Me and Anti-Reform (Part III of. . .)

Posted on August 1, 2013

2

So where did I leave off? My story is a little disjointed so I guess I will continue with that technique to further flesh out how I developed my points of view on various education issues. I was chatting with a reporter recently trying to put some pieces together to explain to her how I got to where I am today. Perhaps you would like to hear some of that?

Prior to John White’s arrival I applied for and was interviewed for a few higher profile level jobs. One of those was the head of Louisiana’s Department of Education Accountability department. I’d heard a number of stories about some political manipulation and fraudulent data reporting and I wanted to see if I could do something about that. I was friends with the previous head of the department and we’d discussed at some lengths some of the problems in his area. It was a high stress thankless sounding job for a couple thousand dollars a year more, that would probably doom anyone who took it to a life of jaded failure, but I was (perhaps foolishly) willing to give it a go. I’d worked with many of the folks in the accountability department on data audits, had my brain picked for the dropouts and graduate cohort calculations, and worked with their testing data and School Performance Score data for numerous federal reports and internal projects. While I did not land that job, (I think my lack of a PHD played a role there although I think it should have), nevertheless I stayed in touch with this area and their problems.

One of these problems was the existence of Shadow Schools. EBR and Superintendent Bernard 

High-Stakes Testing in American Public Schools Student Voice

Student Voice:

High-Stakes Testing in American Public Schools

High-stakes testing is bad for education. The concept effectively forces teachers to “teach to the test,” holds all students to the same standards (regardless of their strengths and weaknesses), and, thus, is conducive to cheating (by students and teachers alike).

A teacher teaching to the test, or simply teaching the test itself, is a waste of everybody’s time. In my own experience, during the 2005-06 school year (third grade, when the dreaded Missouri Assessment Program (MAP) began), our teacher, as well as the other third grade teachers in the building, taught us how to take the test for four weeks. Instead of educational content for those four weeks, we got sheet after sheet of MAP test practice. Constructed response was drilled into our heads, multiple choice sheets became more commonplace than anyone cares to remember, and we didn’t do much touching up on what we’d learned over the course of the year, but by god, we were going to know how to take that test. I would figure that most students in the American public school system during the No Child Left Behind era would have a similar experience.

There are two problems with this. The first is that standardized test should not be so difficult for the students that they have to be taught how to take it any differently than their regular classroom tests. The second is that it took away a chunk of useful class time. Figure we spend six weeks on the test altogether (four for “practice,” and two for the test itself)—out of a forty-week school year, those six weeks make up fifteen percent of the school year. That is simply too much of the school year that’s being wasted teaching students how to beat a

- See more at: http://www.stuvoice.org/2013/08/01/high-stakes-testing-in-us-schools/?utm_source=feedly#sthash.jrSkO8LZ.dpuf

District administrators balk at calculating how much each school spends per student | Education By The Numbers

District administrators balk at calculating how much each school spends per student | Education By The Numbers:

District administrators balk at calculating how much each school spends per student

Since President Johnson’s War on Poverty Program in 1965, policy makers have been trying to equalize education spending across the United States. The lofty goal is for schools with lots of poor students to have access to the same resources that schools with rich kids have. But researchers and advocates for the poor have pointed to loopholes in Title I funding that effectively allow affluent schools to operate at higher levels of funding than low-income schools. For example, Marguerite Roza at the Center on Reinventing Public Education found that less money is spent on salaries in high-poverty schools than on low-poverty schools within the same district.

Because there can be so much variation in poverty within a school district (just think about the socio-economic differences between Tribeca and the Bronx), the Department of Education is making a big push to calculate exactly how much each school spends on a student. That might sound simple enough. But like any data project, the devil is in the details.

The issue is, how do you allocate administrative and other centralized expenses among schools? For example, say you have an itinerant teacher who spends a few hours at one school, then moves to another, and then another — each day of the week. To properly figure out how much of that teacher’s salary to attribute to each school, districts would need to create some sort of time-and-attendance punchcard system. But who wants to create such an expensive system or put teachers on punch cards?

I attended a boisterous and sometimes acrimonious session on this topic between district bean 

Schooling in the Ownership Society: Who's making out on the great DePaul Basketball land swindle?

Schooling in the Ownership Society: Who's making out on the great DePaul Basketball land swindle?:

Who's making out on the great DePaul Basketball land swindle?

Just in case you thought Rahm's DePaul Arena land grab was about basketball -- it ain't. Rather it's nothing less than one of the great taxpayer rip-offs in Chicago history. The deal enriches a web of the mayor's clouted friends using millions in TIF funds that should have gone to bail out a bankrupt school system. It is the culmination of massive kickbacks and political contributions from investors, bankers, and lakefront property owners to Gov. Quinn, Ald. Burke, Mayors Daley and Emanuel.

While everyone has lately had their eye on the penny-ante shenanigans of the Chicago machine boys, like Boss Madigan's hiring of his pals and relatives over at the RTA, Tribune writers Kathy Bergen and Bill Ruthhart were documenting the major league stuff in last Sunday's business section. 

Best and funniest quotes:

"This isn't some clout project," McPier CEO Jim Reilly said. "That isn't how we do business."

Emanuel spokesman Tom Alexander said the mayor's chief lobbyist,

UPDATE: Seattle Schools Community Forum: Melissa and I are flattered

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Melissa and I are flattered:

PTA Fundraising Changes

I did speak with Teresa Wippel, SPS Communications.  Our conversation helped clear up some issues but my reading of the RCWs cited now muddies it. I will follow up with Teresa and the SCPTSA President to try to get more clarification but here is what I was told.  (Also, I hope the SCPTA president sends out a detailed explanation of what school PTAs can and cannot do with these types of funds and h

by Melissa Westbrook / 12min 

Melissa and I are flattered

The Seattle Times has an interesting job posting. One-Year Community Engagement Editor

Here's the job description:

The community engagement editor for the Seattle Times-Solutions Journalism Project will bring a startup mentality and passion and tenacity for seeking solutions to the big questions facing education. In this one-year position, the editor will develop and manage a blog for the project that will become the region’s destination for education conversations. This editor will edit and curate staff and community contributions and conversations, making the blog a destination for the latest news and most innovative thinking on education advances and policies.

It would appear that the Times would like to compete with this blog. That's not necessary. They can get a better deal by simply offering the job to Melissa. That way for the same price as a chance to steal this blog's traffic they can simply buy it.

Will Florida Head Of Schools Resign over Charter Cheating in Indiana?

 Update:  And so he did resign, saying an old ed reform canard,  Florida "doesn't have time to waste." He also said (and again, another old tactic):  “The most important thing we have to do is educate children,” Bennett said. “Maybe what we ought to do is debate how the best way to do that is without being personal and assigning motives to it.”From Indiana Public Media:Bennett’s successor will be

by Melissa Westbrook / 3h 

On Mayor Kevin Johnson and the latest strong-mayor push Sacramento News & Review -

Sacramento News & Review - On Mayor Kevin Johnson and the latest strong-mayor push - Bites - Opinions - August 1, 2013:

On Mayor Kevin Johnson and the latest strong-mayor push

The latest strong-mayor push features different players—but still presumes to know the answers

By Cosmo Garvin 
cosmog@newsreview.com

Read 3 reader submitted comments

This article was published on 08.01.13.

Related stories: Dial M, not for money Sacramento charter commission looks to be less a distraction than Allen Warren’s campaign finances.SN&R, 10.11.12. Transparent charter reform trumping strong-mayor push Charter commission would bring more transparency than Kevin Johnson’s strong-mayor push has.SN&R, 01.26.12.

Call it Strong Mayor 4.0. Some of the players are different, but the gist is the same: Backers want an executive mayor with greater power to write the budget and control the city bureaucracy.
Organizers of the new initiative—now going by the name Sacramento Tomorrow—say beyond that basic principle, their initiative is a blank slate.
“We are trying to be really genuine in saying none of this is preordained,” said David Nagler, a former lobbyist and biotech executive who was hired on to organize the effort.
How strong should the strong mayor be? How deep into layers of the bureaucracy should his power to hire and fire reach? Should other reforms, such as a redistricting commission or an ethics commission, be part of the package? These are all to be determined in Sacramento Tomorrow’s outreach process, said Nagler.
“We are going to go out in a broad-based way, talking to folks who have been excluded from the process in the past,” he explained. Only after that will the Sacramento City Council be asked to put a strong-mayor proposal on the ballot next year.
This time, the votes will probably be there.
Nagler said this effort is not related toKevin “Boss” Johnson or his previous attempts to push strong mayor through. Certainly, there are some holdovers from Johnson’s old gang on the Sacramento

Maybe the problem is that the Mayor doesn't know his own strength:  The Rise and Fall of Kevin Johnson http://bit.ly/15WnS99

The fight over schools, standardization, Vallas | Westfair Communications

The fight over schools, standardization, Vallas | Westfair Communications:

The fight over schools, standardization, Vallas

By: Jennifer Bissell Posted date: August 01, 2013 In: Education, Fairfield, Featured | comment : 0

Superintendent Paul Vallas is either saving Bridgeport’s public schools or is unfit to lead, piloting the district on a crash course to disaster. For better or worse, his supporters and detractors can agree on one thing: Vallas is bringing a business sense to managing the troubled school system.

In the last 18 months, Bridgeport Superintendent Paul Vallas has closed the district’s $12 million budget deficit, increased school funding, created plans to open five new schools and purchased laptops and new textbooks. He’s done so without any layoffs.

Vallas said he’s been able to balance the budget primarily by implementing a business-like approach through standardization, streamlining and testing. He’s instituted methods for purchasing in bulk, monitoring employee overtime and adjusting bus pick-up times to save millions of dollars.

Mayor Bill Finch, left, at a recent school-themed security event.

“I make no apologies for bringing modern business practices into the district,” Vallas said. “There were probably a hundred things the district could have been doing more efficiently, costing money and contributing to the inefficiencies of the district.”

The Bridgeport school system has the largest achievement gap in the nation, two thirds of the schools are failing an

Teaching with Informational Text: Historic Newspapers from the Library of Congress « The Core Knowledge Blog

Teaching with Informational Text: Historic Newspapers from the Library of Congress « The Core Knowledge Blog:

Teaching with Informational Text: Historic Newspapers from the Library of Congress

by Guest Blogger
August 1st, 2013

Tags: Library of Congress, Stephen Wesson
Posted in Education Practice, No category | No Comments »

By Stephen Wesson

Earlier this week, the Core Knowledge Blog explained the need to guide students’ online research and highlighted the Library of Congress’s Primary Source Sets. In this post, which originally appeared on Teaching with the Library of Congress, Stephen Wesson offers ideas for engaging, Common Core-aligned lessons based on historical newspapers. Stephen Wesson is an educational resource specialist at the Library of Congress with extensive experience in education media. 

The St. Paul Daily Globe, November 11, 1887

Here’s a question for anyone teaching with informational text, including teachers working to meet Common Core State Standards:

Where can you find a wide range of authors writing from varied points of view, making arguments with appeals to evidence, rich with rhetorical strategies and figurative language, often using a number of different media, all in one package? In historic 

8-1-13 LA School Report - What's Really Going on Inside LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District)

LA School Report - What's Really Going on Inside LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District):

LA Teachers Proposing Online Voting System for Union Elections

An online voting system in Virginia Less than 23 percent of the 40,000 members of United Teachers of Los Angeles cast ballots in the final round of voting for union president in 2011, the union’s last leadership election. Even fewer, 15 percent, voted in the preliminary round. A new, online voting system could change all that, says a group of teachers who are taking their case to the membership. “

by Brianna Sacks / 29min 

LAUSD school meals get healthy makeover by students

  KABC features a student culinary education program called “Cooking Up Change” featuring students at West Adams High – part of a program at LAUSD to promote healthy eating.  

29min mark as read  //  save

LA Unified Sees Big Rise in AP Enrollment and Exams

Fifty percent more L.A. Unified students in grades nine through 12 signed up for Advanced Placement courses in the last academic year than the number who did six years before, Superintendent John Deasy said in a press release Wednesday. Nearly 18 percent enrolled in AP courses in biology, calculus, chemistry, English literature, foreign languages, government and history during the 2012-13 school y

by Brianna Sacks / 29min 

Most Teach For America Teachers Will End Up at Charters

Over the next couple of years, Los Angeles will see an influx of more than 700 teachers from Teach for America, a non-profit that recruits college graduates, trains them, and places them in public schools across the country. Most of them will end up in charter schools. Of the 340 teachers teaching in Los Angeles this year, about 90 percent are going to charter schools, according to Lida Jennings,

by Hillel Aron / 29min 

Morning Read: No LAUSD Layoffs This Year, Says Zimmer

Prop 30 Means a Year of ‘Stabilization’ When the 2013-2014 school year kicks off on Aug. 13, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) will begin a year of “stabilization,” board member Steve Zimmer, 4th District, said. With a potentially longer school year and other changes being mulled for the 2014-2015 school year, the district is still benefitting from the passage of Prop. 30, which impo

29min 

The biggest loser in the Tony Bennett resignation:

The biggest loser in the Tony Bennett resignation = Jeb Bush’s Cheats for Change school reform group.

By Valerie Strauss, Published: August 1 at 2:03 pmE-mail the writer

Jeb Bush                                              (AP Photo/El Nuevo Herald, Hector Gabino)

Jeb Bush’s Cheats for Change school reform group.

Now this gives new meaning to Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change school reform group.

Tony Bennett, founding Chiefs member, just resigned as Florida’s superintendent of public schools amid a scandal about his actions when he was Indiana’s schools chief. He was forced out ofthat job late last year by Indiana voters but then was scooped up by the Bush-dominated Board of Education in Florida, where he started as superintendent in January.

In less than a year, Bennett has been ousted from two leading education positions. The first time was by voters disgruntled with his standardized test-based school reform program, which had originally been implemented in Florida under Jeb Bush when he was governor from 1999-2007.

Bennett was a protege of Bush, who became a national school reform leader in recent years through two Florida-based foundations he established  to push his school reform model, which includes vouchers, charter schools and an A-F system to grade schools