Monday, December 9, 2013

12-9-13 Wait What?

Wait What?:





Connecticut Democratic Party Chair fails to explain – Why did the Party divert 40k to fight pro-public education Democrats in Bridgeport Primary?
Moments ago, Democratic State Chairwoman Nancy DiNardo sent out another email to party activists seeking donations for the Connecticut Democratic State Central Committee. DiNardo asks, “Can you be a part of this and chip in $5 today? But DiNardo and the Democratic Party have yet to address the important issue that has been raised again […]The post Connecticut Democratic Party Chair fails to explai
by jonpelto / 14min 

Reverend Kenneth Moales Jr. – Mayor Bill Finch’s campaign treasurer is classless to the end
Tonight, the Bridgeport Board of Education has selected a new chairperson for the Bridgeport Board of Education. Reverend Kenneth Moales, Jr., corporate education reform champion, Mayor Bill Finch campaign treasurer and Governor Malloy ally has proven yet again why he is incapable of serving as a representative of the people of Bridgeport. As if to […]The post Reverend Kenneth Moales Jr. – Mayor B
by jonpelto / 1h 


Steve Perry saga continues
After missing school Friday morning in order to give a speech in Massachusetts, Capital Prep Principal Steve Perry jetted off to speak at a Disney event on Saturday. Sunday, upon his return to Connecticut, he met with some Capital Prep parents to whip them up in an effort to resurrect his plan to get the […]The post Steve Perry saga continues appeared first on Wait What?.
by jonpelto / 46min 

Malloy’s campaign donation haul from corporate education reform industry tops $70k
An updated review of the latest federal and state campaign finance reports reveal that Governor Malloy has collected in excess of $70,000 in campaign contributions from individuals associated with the corporate education reform industry. Although Malloy has yet to announce whether he will seek re-election next year and he has not filed the necessary paperwork […]The post Malloy’s campaign donation
by jonpelto / 1h  
12-8-13 Wait What?
Wait What?: Democratic response to Malloy’s fundraising strategy is absurd and insulting…Over the past month, Governor Malloy’s strategy for raising money for his potential re-election bid has become increasingly clear.  Not only does he intended to take the millions in public financing but he is seeking to augment that amount with millions more in donation from those who do business with the stat
by mike simpson / 8h 


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12-9-13 The Answer Sheet

The Answer Sheet:




Education activists protest, rally in scores of cities
Today parents, educators, students and activists around the country are staging a “Day of Action” with scores of coordinated events in more than 60 cities that sponsors hope will draw national attention to the problems of corporate-influenced school reform and to build a national movement to change the public education conversation and to increase funding […]    
by Valerie Strauss / 8min 



Who de Blasio really wanted as NYC schools chancellor
New York City Mayor-Elect Bill de Blasio is considering a number of candidates to be his new public schools chancellor —  a decision that is one of the most visible and important he will make as he staffs his new administration — and it seems like every day there is a new rumor about who […]    
by Valerie Strauss / 5h 



12-8-13 The Answer Sheet
The Answer Sheet: Education innovation: A case study in what not to doThe $1 billion initiative by the Los Angeles public schools district to give an iPad to all 650,000 students and teachers for home use has been nothing short of a mess, plagued by poor planning and bad execution. You can read about it here. Here’s a new look at what went wrong from  Larry Cuban, a […]    by Valerie Strauss / 7mi
by mike simpson / 7h
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Scathing Purple Musings | Color me purple in Florida, red in Washington, dark sky-blue in Israel and public school in Education

Scathing Purple Musings | Color me purple in Florida, red in Washington, dark sky-blue in Israel and public school in Education:




Welcome back, Coach – FL teacher and writer, Bob Sikes, has returned to the Blogosphere !!! #ColorMeHappy @bobsikes | Continuing Change
Welcome back, Coach – FL teacher and writer, Bob Sikes, has returned to the Blogosphere !!! #ColorMeHappy @bobsikes | Continuing Change: Welcome back, Coach – FL teacher and writer, Bob Sikes, has returned to the Blogosphere !!! #ColorMeHappy @bobsikesDecember 8, 2013Education      Rate ThisGOOD news !!!!Florida teacher and education blogger, Bob Sikes of Scathing Purple Musings has returned from
by mike simpson / 5h 



Sick of ObamaCare? Consider JebSchools

Posted on December 9, 2013by 
Last year’s abrupt departure of Florida’s education commissioner, Tony Bennett, put the brakes on the ideological insanity that drove the state’s education policy-making. After three straight commissioners who were tools of Jeb Bush’ s foundations, it was time to have someone different. Pam Stewart has brought much-needed deliberate, thoughtful process back to the table. The Orlando Sentinel’s excellent education reporter, Leslie Postal, gives a review of what’s happened over the last few months with Florida’s testing regime:
A recent memo from Education Commissioner Pam Stewart suggested state educators want to tread carefully.
“Florida is engaged in a fair and open process … leaving all options available as we move forward with the statewide assessment decision,” she wrote.
In 2010, Florida adopted Common Core, then joined a group of about 20 other states to devise new standardized tests tied to those standards. The exams created by the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness of College and Careers were to replace FCAT’s math, reading and writing 

  
Common Core’s Chickens Are Coming Home to Roost in Florida | Scathing Purple Musings
Common Core’s Chickens Are Coming Home to Roost in Florida | Scathing Purple Musings: Common Core’s Chickens Are Coming Home to Roost in FloridaPosted on December 8, 2013by Bob SikesThere’s a nifty little site I can  calculate the number of days it has been since my last post – 116 to be exact. More on my sabbatical later. But it seems ironic now that my last post on August 15th was  It’s Begun: F
by mike simpson / 7h 
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What’s Politics Got To Do With It? – redqueeninla

What’s Politics Got To Do With It? – redqueeninla:

What’s Politics Got To Do With It?

Written by redqueeninla in LAUSD



What’s “politics” mean to you, for that matter?  Because it is evidently another of these words for which there are different, loaded meanings to different people, a “buzzword”.
In all honesty, this surprises me; I thought it was fairly straight-forward to know what is “politics”, I did not understand it to be an ambiguous concept.  And while It is clear public respect for congress is rank-bottom, respect for, say, the presidency is not.  And yet confidence in institutions is not the same as respect for a “lifestyle”, and the significance of this to our local neighborhood functioning is important.
To consider yourself as part of a political society, a democracy, requires a respect for the process of politicking.  As citizens of a democratic system we are all each part of that process, at least potentially.  Denying its primacy is simply another form of denying reality.  Politics matters because it affects your life in the here-and-now, but more, feeding an active process with participation influences the shape of that living structure in the future.
A consequence, or perhaps corollary of finding politicians untrustworthy and 


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12-9-13 Daily Kos: Invisible Child

Daily Kos: Invisible Child:




Invisible Child
She wakes to the sound of breathing. The smaller children lie tangled beside her, their chests rising and falling under winter coats and wool blankets. A few feet away, their mother and father sleep near the mop bucket they use as a toilet. Two other children share a mattress by the rotting wall where the mice live, opposite the baby, whose crib is warmed by a hair dryer perched on a milk crate. T
by rss@dailykos.com ... / 2h 


12-8-13 teacherken at Daily Kos
teacherken at Daily Kos: Light a room with potatoes - reallyperhaps even charge your cell phone that way. Don't believe me?  Take a look at A Potato Battery Can Light Up a Room For Over a Month from Smithsonian.com How it works -   What the potato does is simply help conduct electricity by acting as what’s called a salt-bridge between the the two metals, allowing the electron current to move freel
by mike simpson / 5h 

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12-9-13 Perdido Street School

Perdido Street School:




Tish James: Let's Reform School System In First 100 Days
Via a Beth Fertig tweet:Tisch James calls on De Blasio to reform ed system in first 100 days... Says she is a friend but was elected to be "a thorn in his side"— Beth Fertig (@bethfertig) December 9, 2013Let's make sure whatever reform de Blasio and his DOE chancellor, it is REAL REFORM, not the corporate education reform stuff we've gotten from Barack Obama and Andrew Cuomo.
by reality-based edu... / 8min



Valerie Strauss Says Kaya Henderson Was Never Seriously Considered By De Blasio For Chancellor
Informative post from Valerie Strauss about de Blasio's chancellor search:Among the people who have been considered at one point or another in the decision-making process are, according to sources, Joshua Starr, Montgomery County Public Schools superintendent, who has good union relations and who became nationally known when he called for a three-year moratorium on standardized testing last year; 
by reality-based edu... / 38min 

NY Post Attacks Joshua Starr, Tries To Torpedo Him From DOE Job
Okay, this is telling.The NY Post attacked Montgomery County Schools Superintendent Joshua Starr today for allegedly failing to crack down on pedophile teachers.Turns out the Post attack on Starr's so-called failure to crack down on pedophile teachers is based on one case Seems odd to attack Starr for systemic failure to protect children from pedophiles based upon one case. Yet that's what they do
by reality-based edu... / 18min

Randi Weingarten and The Day of Misdirection.
 Oh wait, that's every day for her...That's Michael Fiorillo's response to Randi Weingarten p.r. over today's "Day of Action" to recalaim the promise of public education.And indeed, there is a diversionary tactic in this call to action.Even as our union leaders take millions of dollars from Bill Gates to promote the CCSS, to agree to teacher evaluations tied to test scores, and to collab
by reality-based edu... / 2h 


12-8-13 Perdido Street School
Perdido Street School: Randi Weingarten And The Day Of ActionGates Foundation cash-flushed Randi Weingarten is advertising a "Day of Action" to save public education tomorrow.As I told Randi on twitter (a conversation you can see here), she's full of crap over this "save public education" stuff since she's done so much to wreck it herself - from signing off on the Race to the T
by mike simpson / 10h 
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The Educated Reporter: EWA Resources for Reporters: Webinars, Story Starters and More

The Educated Reporter: EWA Resources for Reporters: Webinars, Story Starters and More:


EWA Resources for Reporters: Webinars, Story Starters and More

In case you missed it, you can catch a replay of our webinar on the new GED, which is going to reshape the landscape for individuals seeking to move ahead with their educations. In fact, we've got recordings of all our most recent online events conveniently collected in one place.

What else does EWA have to offer? I'm glad you asked. How about Story Starters, your go-to resource for background, the latest research, and expert sources on a wide range of topics. And you don't have to be "starting" a story to find useful information. In fact, it's a great place to go digging deeper into topics you're already writing about. And there's the new Glossary of Education Reform, where you can find out more about everything block scheduling to winter sessions (expanded learning time).

The last one is particularly good topic to check out as we move closer to the holidays. What do your schools have planned for the winter break? Will there be test prep for state exit exams for the high school seniors? Or a math boot camp for middle schoolers looking to get a jump start on the new semester? What about enrichment activities for the kids who attend Safe Key programs?

Have a question, comment or concern for the Educated Reporter? Email EWA public editor Emily Richmond at erichmond@ewa.org. Follow her on Twitter: @EWAEmily.
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POSTED BY EMILY RICHMOND AT 12:00 AM 
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School Funding Litigation Seems Endless But Proves Essential | janresseger

School Funding Litigation Seems Endless But Proves Essential | janresseger:

School Funding Litigation Seems Endless But Proves Essential

Posted on  by 
According to David Sciarra, executive director of the Education Law Center and lead counsel in the New Jersey school funding case, Abbott v. Burke,  “There is a decades-old and stubborn unwillingness by governors and legislators in state capitols to remedy the stark disparities in educational opportunity that mark the education landscape in most of our states.”
Noticing that states do not adequately compensate for enormous disparities in local taxing capacity from school district to school district, Eduardo Porter, writing a month ago in the business section of the NY Times, wondered: “If education is a poor child’s best shot at rising up the ladder of prosperity, why do public resources devoted to education lean so decisively in favor of the better off?”  This question is related to the much discussed international PISA scores released last week, an international score ranking in which the test scores of U.S. students in schools segregated by poverty and race pulled down the average for our society.
Even before last week’s despair about PISA scores, Porter raised the central issue:  “The United States is one of few advanced nations where schools serving better-off children usually have more educational resources than those serving poor students, according to research by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).”  The OECD that conducted the research on comparative school funding equity is also the sponsor of the PISA exams.
Porter quotes Andreas Schleicher, in charge of the PISA assessments for OECD:  “The bottom line is that the vast majority of OECD countries either invest equally into every student or 
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Shanker Blog » Immediate Gratification And Education Policy

Shanker Blog » Immediate Gratification And Education Policy:

Immediate Gratification And Education Policy

Posted by  on December 9, 2013


A couple of months ago, Bill Gates said something that received a lot of attention. With regard to his foundation’s education reform efforts, which focus most prominently on teacher evaluations, but encompass many other areas, he noted, “we don’t know if it will work.” In fact, according to Mr. Gates, “we won’t know for probably a decade.”
He’s absolutely correct. Most education policies, including (but not limited to) those geared toward shifting the distribution of teacher quality, take a long time to work (if they do work), and the research assessing these policies requires a great deal of patience. Yet so many of the most prominent figures in education policy routinely espouse the opposite viewpoint: Policies are expected to have an immediate, measurable impact (and their effects are assessed in the crudest manner imaginable).
A perfect example was the reaction to the recent release of results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
Several state and district educational agency leaders (not to mention dozens of advocates) were quick to attribute increases in average scores to recent policy changes. This is, I suppose, predictable – these are highly politicized offices, and one might expect their incumbents to take every opportunity to score points. It is, however, unbecoming of their important positions, and does a disservice to the public.
Some of the worst commentary this year came from the editorial boards of the nation’s largest newspapers. In particular, the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal all published editorials that could easily 
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Seeing in theory and practice: the impact of a liberal-arts education | Hechinger Report

Seeing in theory and practice: the impact of a liberal-arts education | Hechinger Report:

Seeing in theory and practice: the impact of a liberal-arts education

By
As a college senior, I decided to round out my undergraduate experience with several courses in the humanities, including introductory philosophy. Among the concepts we studied was George (Bishop) Berkeley’s contention that familiar objects like tables and chairs are merely ideas in the minds of perceivers. It seemed bizarre to me, but I was also fascinated by Berkeley’s departure from the common assumption that everyone sees objective reality in the same way. I hadn’t previously considered whether or not we all see the same tables and chairs.
Therese McCarty
Therese McCarty
A few months later, I was prescribed eyeglasses for the first time. I had one nearsighted eye and one 20-20 eye, resulting in a loss of depth perception. When I put the glasses on for the first time, I was stunned by the shift in what I saw. Had I spent my whole life seeing things differently from how they really are? I found myself wondering. Given the variations in people’s eyes and brains and given the potential for imprecisions in vision correction, does everyone see things somewhat differently? I realized that Berkeley was on to something. The table that I see is not the table that you see; it’s not even the table that I see with my glasses 
The realization that people see things differently has stuck with me. Over and over, I have noticed that people experiencing the same conversation or event do not see it the same way. As an administrator, I know that it is very important to be aware of varying perception
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Some sober words for school boards amid predictions of plenty | EdSource Today

Some sober words for school boards amid predictions of plenty | EdSource Today:

1
RB-pub-community-college-fundingFor the first time since the Great Recession,school districts are getting more money this yearfrom the state; some – big beneficiaries of the new Local Control Funding Formula – are getting a lot. And that increase is expected to be larger next year, in one-time and ongoing money, if theLegislative Analyst’s predictions for a rebounding economy are on target.
School finance experts John Gray and Joel Montero, however, injected a cautionary note during a presentation Friday at the California School Boards Association’s annual convention in San Diego.
“We are still in a volatile situation. Be conservative. Be careful,” Montero advised several dozen school board members at his talk.
Montero is the unofficial fiscal worrywart of K-12 education. As the executive director of the stateFiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, or FCMAT, his job is to see that districts don’t run out of money and end up in bankruptcy. FCMAT’s oversight and dire warnings have worked; only a handful of the state’s 1,000 districts are in receivership despite devastating cuts over the past five years.
Gray is president of School Services of California, a Sacramento consulting firm that provides services to

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Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES:

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Nelson Mandela 
Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life. While poverty persists, there is no true freedom.”  -- Johannesburg   July 2, 2005
Secret Teacher
My son brought home a Christmas card that consisted of a piece of white card folded in half which had been decorated with pictures from clipart. It had a typed message on the back about the learning objectives covered in the task. Disappointing. -- Guardian
Amisha Patel, Chicago Grassroots Collaborative
 “To even force a City Council debate around TIFs for the first time was amazing, and we’re going to continue to push. You don’t get to bury legislation in  comes from I
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