NPE News Briefs ← from The Network for Public Education 10-19-13

NPE News Briefs ← from The Network for Public Education:

NPE News Briefs

Study: Almost Half of Public School Students Are Now Low-Income | Jordan Weissmann – The Atlantic

A new study reminds us that poverty is the giant backpack dragging down American students. In America, what you earn depends largely on your success in school. Unfortunately, your success in school depends largely on what your parents earn. It’s an intergenerational Catch 22 that’s at the heart of modern poverty. Keep that in mind while looking at the ...read moreThe post Study: Almost Half of Pub

4 by admin / 47min 

State Board Wants A-F Grades Faster, Asks Legislative Leaders To Intervene | StateImpact Indiana

The State Board of Education wants the Indiana General Assembly in charge of the 2012-13 school letter grades, not the Department of Education. In a letter to Speaker of the House Brian Bosma and Senate President Pro Tem David Long, the board members requested that the state’s legislative services agency run the A-F school ratings, ...read moreThe post State Board Wants A-F Grades Faster, Asks Leg

2 by admin / 47min 

Some NC teachers plan walkout; others plan walk-in | News 14

RALEIGH – Last month, News 14 Carolina was the first media outlet to report on some teachers planning a walkout for Nov. 4. Now, another group is urging teachers instead to take part in a walk-in. Teachers have been speaking out all year; frustrated over low pay, no raises, the end of teacher tenure and ...read moreThe post Some NC teachers plan walkout; others plan walk-in | News 14 appeared firs

by admin / 47min 

Community plans next steps after losing vote against Noble Charter | catalyst-chicago.org

By: Jenna Frasier / October 18, 2013 Two community groups are trying to figure out their next steps after they lost their battle to block the construction of a new Noble Street Charter School. The City Council’s zoning committee voted 7 to 3 to approve a request to rezone an area across the street from ...read moreThe post Community plans next steps after losing vote against Noble Charter | cataly

6 by admin / 47min 

YESTERDAY

Moody’s Investor Service Confirms Worry that Privatization is Destroying Urban School Districts | janresseger

In an earlier post, Creating Public School Districts of Last Resort, I described my own concern that public school policies being driven by the federal Race to the Top grants, School Improvement Grants, and No Child Left Behind Waivers—policies that include incentives to close public schools and expand charters—are creating urban public school districts-of-last-resort.  Charter ...read moreThe pos

11 by admin / 16h 

$500 million? No! $3 BILLION! That’s $3BILLION! Comments New York State’s Underfunding of NYC Schools | School Finance 101

New York’s Governor Cuomo has been big on words promising NOT TO FUND New York State schools and squeeze them to the maximum extent possible with layers of cuts and caps. After all – NOT FUNDING SCHOOLS is the most noble of endeavors – that along with declaring death penalties for those underfunded, high need ...read moreThe post $500 million? No! $3 BILLION! That’s $3BILLION! Comments New York St

3 by admin / 16h 

When Charters Cause Harm (and Leaders Fail to Lead) | Yinzercation

Pittsburgh got some most unwelcome news this week: the state is foisting two charter schools upon us that our school board voted against. This will add millions to the district’s budget deficit just as we are being told we must close more schools in our communities in order to address that deficit. Meanwhile, our legislators ...read moreThe post When Charters Cause Harm (and Leaders Fail to Lead)

by admin / 16h 

Study: Poor children are now the majority in American public schools in South, West | The Washington Post

By Lyndsey Layton, Published: October 16 E-mail the writer A majority of students in public schools throughout the American South and West are low-income for the first time in at least four decades, according to a new study that details a demographic shift with broad implications for the country. The analysis by the Southern Education Foundation, ...read moreThe post Study: Poor children are now t

15 by admin / 20h 

Lawmakers call for education chief’s resignation | Capital New York

BY JESSICA BAKEMAN 6:15 pm Oct. 17, 2013 ALBANY–Unions and their legislative allies are increasing the pressure on New York State education commissioner John King, with state lawmakers calling for his resignation and a powerful teachers’ union planning public forums to “fill the void” created by the ones the commissioner canceled. King has faced a ...read moreThe post Lawmakers call for education

9 by admin / 20h 

How allowing NC schools to be ‘graded’ fails our students | NewsObserver.com

By Pamela Grundy The large, orange-red D-minus dominates the web page, leaping out from the white background. I’m looking at a so-called “Report Card” for Shamrock Gardens Elementary School, prepared by a lobbying group known as The Carolina Campaign for Achievement Now, or CarolinaCAN. As everyone who has ever gotten a report card knows, a ...read moreThe post How allowing NC schools to be ‘grade

3 by admin / 20h 

A Broadie Wreaks Havoc in Montclair, New Jersey | Diane Ravitch’s blog

Starting in 2002, the unaccredited Broad Superintendents “Academy” has produced graduates who supposedly learned the management techniques to turn the nation’s schools around. The Academy consists of six weekends over a ten-month session, where aspiring leaders are immersed in Billionaire Eli Broad’s management philosophy, which apparently means top-down mandates, high-stakes testing, close school

by admin / 20h 

TFA Scores Big Win in Federal Debt Deal | Diane Ravitch’s blog

One of the provisions of No Child Left Behind was a requirement that the neediest children would have “highly qualified teachers.” Most people would interpret that language to mean that poor kids would get teachers who are well-prepared and experienced. But through its political connections on Capitol Hill, Teach for America managed to get a ...read moreThe post TFA Scores Big Win in Federal Debt

4 by admin / 20h 

What poor children need in school | The Answer Sheet

BY VALERIE STRAUSS October 18 at 6:00 am Yesterday I wrote a post about how public education’s biggest problem — poverty — keeps getting worse, with the news from a new report that a majority of students in public schools in the American South and West are low-income for the first time in at least four decades. ...read moreThe post What poor children need in school | The Answer Sheet appeared firs

12 by admin / 22h 

Can You Advise This Parent? | Diane Ravitch’s blog

I received the following comment this morning. I don’t have the answer to everything, and I am not sure what I would do in her place, but this is my advice. Organize the other parents of kindergarten children. Go as a group to the superintendent and tell him this is wrong. Get parents of children ...read moreThe post Can You Advise This Parent? | Diane Ravitch’s blog appeared first on NPE News Bri

9 by admin / 22h 

New Community-Based Approach to Accountability Featured on PBS-TV EdTalk | Cloaking Inequity

How can we banish No Child Left Behind’s top-down and narrow paradigm? Local control has been a bedrock principle of public schooling in America since its inception. NCLB sent us in the opposite direction of this traditional notion. A return to a traditional locally-based educational policy can be again realized via a multiple measures approach to ...read moreThe post New Community-Based Approach

2 by admin / 22h 

The Reformy Campaign Finance Machine Goes To Georgia | Jersey Jazzman

Last spring, I happened – by sheer luck – to come across an unannounced, coordinated campaign finance machine, put together to support reformy candidates in school board and state-level races across the country. This machine distributed more than one-quarter million dollars to small, obscure races that had never seen this level of campaign finance before: ...read moreThe post The Reformy Campaign

by admin / 1d 

Hold the Applause, Please! The Budget Deal: Why did schools, teachers, moms, infants, children and others get sacrificed? | Reclaim Reform

Posted on October 17, 2013 by Ken Previti “The legislation would allow teachers participating in alternative-certification programs (for example, TEACH FOR AMERICA) to be considered ‘highly qualified’ for an additional two years, through the 2015-16 school year.” Read the Education Week article HERE. What is this doing in a “clean” budget bill? What else is ...read moreThe post Hold the Applause,

3 by admin / 1d 

John King’s Uncommon Schools Charters Opt Out of RTTT Which Makes Their Teachers Exempt From King’s Eval System | Ed Notes Online

One more example of the deep corruption ed deform brings. State Education Commissioner John King is overhauling New York’s method of evaluating teachers — but Uncommon Schools don’t have to follow the new state rules, as they have opted out of federal Race to the Top funds…  Daily New And by the way, guess which ...read moreThe post John King’s Uncommon Schools Charters Opt Out of RTTT Which Makes

16 by admin / 1d 

Albuquerque High School Students Speak Out | @ THE CHALK FACE

OCTOBER 18, 2013 BY KRIS NIELSEN 2 COMMENTS Here is a letter that originated with the Cibola High School student body, and is being copied and personalized and distributed by a growing number of New Mexico high schools, accompanied by a petition for Stand4KidsNM.  Hey, Hanna Skandera said she wanted to hear more from the ...read moreThe post Albuquerque High School Students Speak Out | @ THE CHALK

by admin / 1d 

Can they be this obsessed with data? | The Answer Sheet

Can they be this obsessed with data? Look at some of the data that U.S. Education Department is requiring organizations that receive Promise Neighborhoods grants to collect and report: via Can they be this obsessed with data?.The post Can they be this obsessed with data? | The Answer Sheet appeared first on NPE News Briefs.

8 by admin / 1d 

10-19-13 Schools Matter All Week

Schools Matter: 

 Schools Matter All Week

An EdWeak Interview with Melinda Gates?

I have asked repeatedly a key question about Bill Gates and his hobby of education reform:If Bill Gates had no money, who would listen to him about education reform? No one–the same as who should listen to him now.Now we have an EdWeak interview with Melinda Gates, which forces an additional question:If Melinda Gates weren’t married to Bill Gates, who would listen to her about education.Again, the

3 by P. L. Thomas / 1h 

YESTERDAY

Chess in school: A good move or patzer move?

Submitted to the Sun Sentinel (Florida), Oct 19Working with an organization called First Move, three Sunrise schools plan to include formal instruction in chess for second and third graders believing that it "provides big academic benefits," ('City incorporating chess at three elementary schools," October 19). Neither the article nor the First Move website mention any evidence that

3 by skrashen / 13h 

Cut Testing Budget and Hire School Nurses

Hiring school nurses, improving the health and well being of children in the poorest neighborhoods who need eyeglasses, dental care, and regular checkups, not to mention expensive medicine for asthma, would lead to higher test scores.Will this incident in Philadelphia change policy?It depends on how far Pearson and McGraw Hill and gang can keep their Golden Goose laying all those golden eggs as Co

3 by Judy Rabin / 15h 

Basketball Hero Bobby Heaton and the 13 Filthy Rich Who Bought Indiana Public Education

By Doug Martin Whenever he gets the opportunity, Indiana State House 46 district member Bobby Heaton (who lives in Terre Haute) likes to let everyone know that he played basketball with Larry Bird back in the good ole days at Indiana State University, but nowadays Heaton is a Walmart team player, dribbling out school privatization for the filthy rich who don’t even live in Indiana, let alone his d

89 by Doug Martin / 17h 

OCT 17

First In-School Reform? Teacher Autonomy

The reform agenda has focused almost entirely on in-school only so-called reforms.That paradigm is essentially flawed since the greatest barriers to in-school learning by students and effective teaching by teachers are out-of-school poverty and inequity.However, once we address social reform, in-school reform must begin with teacher autonomy; consider this about Finland:Teachers in Finland – trust

by P. L. Thomas / 1d 

Diane Ravitch and Reformers' Feelings

When Diane Ravitch, in Reign of Error, discusses charter schools, she makes it clear that not all charters impose a “no-excuses” mentality. When discussing the reformers’ public relations machine and its “well-honed message,” she analyses their language and writes, “when they speak of “no-excuses,” they mean boot camp culture.”In a rational world, Ravitch’s careful distinctions, as in the above se

by John Thompson / 2d 

OCT 16

New York Times Editorial Fails Another Fact Check on Charter Schools

The NYTimes Editorial Board is one of the most reliable voices for the corporate education losers who continue to double down on testing accountability policies and privatization schemes that now have decades of evidence to substantiate their failure.  Today's entry is on charter schools, which has this nugget: The editorial states:
"A study published earlier this year shows that the typic

3 by Jim Horn / 2d 

A CorpEd Quandary: How to Reward Teachers in High Poverty Schools With a System That Punishes Them for Working There

Always looking for an opportunity to support corporate ed reform school losers, the Memphis Commerical-Appeal has an editorial today in support of Mississippi’s attempt toestablish merit pay for its teachers.  The editorial board offers no research to support its support, and the editors use the same conflicted rhetoric that CorpEd losers use to call for rewarding teachers based on test scores

3 by Jim Horn / 2d 

Diane Ravitch Documents the Danger of "E-land"

In Reign of Error, Diane Ravitch writes, “Some - a small but important number – believe they are acting rationally by treating the public education sector as an investment opportunity.” Who can argue with that conclusion?Ravitch is tough on Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and his chief of staff, Joanne Weiss. Ravitch did not put words in Weiss’s mouth, however, when the director of the Race to

4 by John Thompson / 3d 

OCT 15

John King Gives Uncommon Schools a Free Pass on Teacher Evaluation Scheme

Before he was Commissioner of Ed in New York, John King ran the KIPP knock-off charter chain, Uncommon Schools, which depends upon the same forced winnowing techniques to run off low test scorers, ELLs, and special ed students.Now King is giving his former chain gang charters a pass on the Rube Goldberg teacher eval system based on the monstrous TN system. Story from the Daily News:State Education

by Jim Horn / 3d 

Memphis Ready to Turn Over $23 Million Head Start Budget to Corporate Cronies at Porter-Leath

We posted on September 30 about Shelby County Mayor, Mark Luttrell, and his cozy relations with fellow corporate pol, Mark Threlkeld, who presides over the Board of Trustees of Porter-Leath, a non-profit corporation that is building an empire on backs of young victims of the Zero Tolerance Era. The former Orphan AsylumPorter-Leath's history goes back to the 19th Century, when it served as home of

6 by Jim Horn / 3d 

Diane Ravitch's Balanced Appraisal of Charters

Diane Ravitch, in Reign of Error, argues that school reform heedlessly replaced the old-fashioned geographically-based system of public education with a competitive market-based system that includes traditional public schools, private schools, privately managed charter schools, for-profit providers, and virtual schools. The roots of this movement, she argues, are “fundamentally libertarian” but, t

11 by John Thompson / 3d 

Hess, Please Begin the Moratorium

I recently called for a moratorium on white men pontificating on race, class, and gender—prompted by a series of blogs by Michael Petrilli. So when I read Rick Hess's "Teachers Deserve (But Have to Earn) Their Seat at the Table," I immediately asked myself a few things: (1) Is this April 1?, (2) Has Hess finally become the unintentional self-parody I have predicted?, and finally, (3) Sho

3 by P. L. Thomas / 4d 

OCT 14

Philadelphia Photographer Captures School Closings

From Newsworks:Photo exhibit opening this week chronicles the 'decline and destruction' of Philly public schools"It's like a visual documentation of what was once a public-school system. This is the beginning of the decline and the destruction of it."--Harvey Finkle, photographer, Philadelphia School Closings Photo Collective and Public School NotebookThe display's 20, mostly color photo

1 by Judy Rabin / 4d 

Technologies Foster Conformity

In a college essay circa 1837 on the "pleasures and privileges" of a literary life, Henry David Thoreau begins with a quote out of Horace stating that every writer loves the grove and flees the city...This love of retiring from the hurry and bustle of the world has, in all ages, closely adhered to those minds most devoted to study and elevated by genius. Such an one "will gladly sna

by Douglas Storm / 4d 

Remembering Columbus

from Glen Brown's blog:Celebrating "Free Market" Style with Christopher ColumbusFrom Columbus’ first expedition log: “They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword; they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane… They would make fine servants… With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them

1 by Jim Horn / 4d 

"creative sales techniques to 'move' students to higher levels of achievement"

Somewhere down the road we will look back on this era of efficiency fixation in the same way we now view the eliminators of waste of the early 20th Century schools, who took principles of "scientific management" and tried to map them onto schools, thus elaborating a system of education based on the efficient transmittal of info bits.Today's example for the future history books on educati

1 by Jim Horn / 4d 

Should Diane Ravitch Be More Careful to Not Hurt Reformers' Feelings?

By now, I’m about the only slowpoke who hasn’t taken a stand on Diane Ravitch’s Reign of Error. Those who object to her indictment of “corporate reform” have had time to catch any possible error of fact or logic. If there is a rebuttal to Ravitch’s statement that “it is difficult to find education organizations that have not been funded by the Gates Foundation,” surely it would have been made by n

8 by John Thompson / 5d 

OCT 13

Value-Added Testing and the Masking of Inequality

This article was previously posted at The Answer Sheet on October 4.This post is comprised largely of excerpts from The Mismeasure of Education that have been re-arranged to answer this question: “Will value-added testing do as little for the nation as it has for Tennessee?”By Jim Horn and Denise WilburnAs White House staff, congressional aides, and a small contingent of think tank insiders huddle

by Jim Horn / 5d 

OCT 12

King Suspends NY State Public Meetings on Common Core After Parents Speak Out

4 by Jim Horn / 6d 

The Head Start Enron Trader Initiative: The Arnold Foundation in Indiana, Louisiana, NYC, Texas, and Beyond

By Doug MartinThe national news has painted Enron’s retired trader and hedge fund manager John Arnold as a Jesus figure since he and his wife announced they were going to cover the government costs of funding Head Start during the government shutdown (better known as the good cop/bad cop ploy by both parties to throw senior citizens, kids, and the poor and middle class under the bus), but the Laur

82 by Doug Martin / 7d