2-6-14 Perdido Street School Week

Perdido Street School:

Ralph Kiner Dies

From Eye on Baseball:Hall of Famer Ralph Kiner passed away at his home in California on Thursday. He died peacefully from natural causes with his family at his side. He was 91.“With the passing of Ralph Kiner, the baseball world has lost one of its greatest ambassadors and the Hall of Fame has lost a wonderful friend,” said Jane Forbes Clark, Chairman of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Muse

by reality-based edu... / 4min 

Let's Have More Meetings

I wanted to meet with you to talk about that meeting you're having about how we need to have more meetings, but I was stuck in another meeting and couldn't meet with you today. Can we meet tomorrow?Sigh...

by reality-based edu... / 53min 

The Problem With Always Making Students Show Their Work

From David Ginsburg at Ed Week:As a new teacher, I upheld the longstanding requirement among math teachers that students must always show their work. And like many teachers, I deducted points when students refused to comply. But the more pushback I got from them--"you shouldn't make us work the problems out if we already know the answers"--the more I questioned the wisdom of this rigid r

by reality-based edu... / 2h hide  //  save

Daily News: ATRS's May Be Returned To Classrooms

The Daily News that reports teachers who are "undesirable: - i.e., ATR's - will be placed back into schools under a plan by NYCDOE Chancellor Farina: A pool of teachers whom principals don’t want to hire may be headed back into the classroom, the Daily News has learned. City Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña has had internal discussions with her staff about placing most of the 1,200 educators

by reality-based edu... / 2h 

2-5-14 Perdido Street School Week

Perdido Street School: Common Core, CCSS Tests, APPR, And InBloom Are A Package DealThe Cuomo administration yesterday:“Common Core is an issue about which there has been a lot of dialogue,” Cuomo spokeswoman Melissa DeRosa said in a statement Tuesday that both affirms the standards and distances the administration from its rocky rollout. The proposed moratorium on its implementation is “premature

by mike simpson / 7h 

2-6-14 With A Brooklyn Accent Go BATs All Week

With A Brooklyn Accent:

Guest Post by Art Believeau " I Used to Be a Good Teacher

Guest Post by Art Believeau" I Used to Be a Good Teacher"http://mrbchs.blogspot.com/2014/02/i-used-to-be-good-teacher.html.

by Mark Naison / 4h hide  //  save

Why the Left as Well as the Right Opposes Common Core- A Video

Why the Left as Well as the Right Opposes Common CoreA Speech to Parents in Peekskill NY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3cl00sPWnY

by Mark Naison / 4h

2-3-14 With A Brooklyn Accent Go BATs All Week

With A Brooklyn Accent: The Badass Teachers Association "Evaluate That" Campaing Goes ViralThe Badass Teachers Association exploded last night on Facebook and Twitter with their #evaluatethat campaign. The idea came to the Facebook page via Georgia BAT Stephanie Lavender Weber who was staying the night with her students in school due to the snow storms that hit Atlanta last week. Stephan

by mike simpson / 8h 

2-6-14 GoPublicSchool.com « An open discussion of public school issues. GoPublicSchool.com

GoPublicSchool.com « An open discussion of public school issues. GoPublicSchool.com:

Horrifying! Testing culture – Over the edge…

Family of dying Orange County student asked for proof from hospice to exempt him from FCAT test… WFTV-9  in Orlando, Florida… Read it. What do you think? Read and share comments here… The post Horrifying! Testing culture – Over the edge… appeared first on GoPublicSchool.com.

by GPS / 2min hide  //  save

Portland teachers vote to walk out Feb. 20

From Newschannel 8′s KGW.com “Teachers at Portland Public Schools voted to strike Wednesday night. A spokesman for the Portland Association of Teachers told KGW the vote was nearly unanimous. Teachers are required to give the district at least 10 working days notice before they could walk off the job. They voted to set the walkout date for Thursday, Feb. 20. If the district’s teachers walk off th

by GPS / 2min 

Blame and bully – Teachers unfairly forced out…

Kurt Kuban in Michigan’s Observer and Eccentric… “… The implication was the teachers informed their students to do poorly on the test so they would show improvement when they took the test again in the spring. As a result of this conclusion, the district offered Warnock and Traxler a deal – resign and get paid for the rest of the year. With little union backing, they decided to accept the deal, wh

by GPS / 1min 

Vergara v. California: The agendas, the facts…

Ben Spielberg at 34Justice… “Ted Boutros believes corporations that destroy lives with reckless policies should suffer minimal financial penalties in court.  Boutros’s partner, Marcellus McRae, proudly defends white-collar criminals.  Eli Broad pretended to support Proposition 30, a ballot initiative designed to prevent massive cuts to public education, while secretly funding the No on 30 movement

by GPS / 4h 

Teacher commitment that cannot be evaluated…

John Nichols in The Nation… “Teachers, parents and students are pushing back against high-stakes testing, over-testing and the fantasy that education is made better by preparing for, conducting and evaluating tests…” Read it. What do you think? Read and share comments here… The post Teacher commitment that cannot be evaluated… appeared first on GoPublicSchool.com.

by GPS / 4h 

NJ – First ratings for 20,000 teachers

Leslie Brody at NorthJersey.com… “The New Jersey Department of Education ushered in a new era for teacher evaluations statewide Tuesday by issuing ratings for roughly 20,000 teachers tied to students’ growth on state tests. Education Commissioner Chris Cerf said these ratings served as a “trial run” and would not count this year. Even so, many teachers in tested subjects have been anxious to see t

by GPS / 4h 

Truth about Shanghai schools: They’re terrible

Saga Ringmar in The Guardian… “The western world watches China’s rise as a formidable world-power with a mixture of awe and apprehension. Sci-fi films depict a futuristic world where Baidu.com is the new Google and Mcdonalds has been replaced by Grandma Wang’s Dumpling Emporium. And yet again Shanghai is number one on the Programme for International Student Assessment’s (Pisa) 2012 ranking list of

by GPS / 4h 

Many teachers blame students’ study habits…

Donna St. George in The Washington Post… “Many Montgomery County teachers blame student study habits for the high failure rates on math exams, according to a survey that also revealed educators’ concerns about grading policies that make it possible to fail a final exam but still pass a course. As county schools officials continue to delve into the causes of students failing some math finals at a r

by GPS / 4h 

A call to ignore exams when evaluating educators…

Al Baker in The New York Times… “A year after a switch to new standardized tests for public school students caused passing rates to plummet, leaders of both political parties in the New York Legislature on Tuesday called on the state to back away from plans to use those exams to grade teachers. In synchronized statements, Democratic leaders of the State Assembly joined Republicans in the State Sen

by GPS / 4h 

So just who is Tiffany Hardrick?

From Bob Braun’s Ledger… “Daryn Martin, the leader of the parent-teacher organization at Ivy Hill School, may go to jail because of a criminal complaint filed by Tiffany Hardrick, an assistant superintendent of schools in Newark who co-founded a New Orleans charter school.  So it’s a good time to ask just who this Dr. Hardrick is, why is she in Newark, and why she left New Orleans. The answer is–s

by GPS / 4h 

2-5-14 GoPublicSchool.com « An open discussion of public school issues. GoPublicSchool.com

GoPublicSchool.com « An open discussion of public school issues. GoPublicSchool.com: Tech’s diversity problem Is apparent as early as high school…Claire Cain Miller in The New York Times… “In three states, not a single girl took the Advanced Placement exam in computer science last year. In eight states, no Hispanic students took it. And in 11 states, no black students took the test…” Read it. What

by mike simpson / 8h 

2-6-14 empathyeducates - Trayvon’s Birth Date Marked With Possible ‘Stand Your Ground’ Case

empathyeducates:

Teflon, Fatalism, and Accountability

By Paul L. Thomas, Ed.D. | Originally Published at The Becoming Radical. February 6, 2014 One legacy of Ronald Reagan’s presidency is his being tagged the Teflon president, as Patricia Schroeder explained: As a young congresswoman, I got the idea of calling President Reagan the “Teflon president” […]

by empathy / 18min 

Down With Textbooks

Amy Conn-Gutierrez/AP Photo By David Cutler | The Atlantic. January 31, 2014 When it comes to teaching history, nothing destroys student interest faster and more completely than a heavy reliance on textbooks. During my first three years of teaching high-school history I would see students’ eyes glaze […]

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Trayvon’s Birth Date Marked With Possible ‘Stand Your Ground’ Case

Photograph; Sybrina Fulton’s Birthday Homage Tweet to her son Trayvon Martin Our children are dying by our own hand and we sanction their slaughter. Some may say standardized-tests do our young in. But what of the killings? What of the guns and the “ground” on which we […]

by empathy / 7h

empathyeducates – Common Core: The Standard That Dares Not Speak Its Name

empathyeducates – Common Core: The Standard That Dares Not Speak Its Name: Common Core: The Standard That Dares Not Speak Its NameHouse K-12 Subcommittee Chairwoman Janet Adkins proposed deleting Common Core from Florida Statutes so all the state’s education standards will be under one name. File photo by John IarussiBy James Call| Originally Published at The Current. January 31, 2014It’s not as O

by mike simpson / 8h 

Where inBloom Wilted | EdSurge News

Where inBloom Wilted | EdSurge News:



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Where inBloom Wilted

Lessons from inBloom’s difficult first year

Creative Commons

Judging by this recent headline in the Washington Post, inBloom is anything but in bloom.

Back in March 2013, inBloom had a big coming-out party at SXSWedu, with a posh room filled with suede white couches and promises of a game-changing data warehousing tool for U.S. school districts. The nonprofit had lined up nine state partners and was expected to spend the subsequent year building secure data services while wooing customers and edtech application providers. Optimism for the program was squelched, however, when Stephanie Simons of Reuters dropped an article that raised questions--and stirred concerns--about the non-profit, aptly titled “K-12 student database jazzes tech startups, spooks parents.”

“Spook” turned out to be a gentle way of putting it. InBloom wound up spending much of the past 12 months battling a bonafide mediastorm. Education reform critic Diane Ravitch  suggested that the non-profit is engaged in identity theft. Leonie Haimson, a parent advocate of 20+ years and founder of Class Size Matters, spearheaded efforts to get districts to cut ties with inBloom.

The bad press has proven costly. Six of those original nine state partners have cut official ties. Massachusetts is still deliberating over whether to use 

How Gates Foundation Helps Shape Public Education Policy | janresseger

How Gates Foundation Helps Shape Public Education Policy | janresseger:

How Gates Foundation Helps Shape Public Education Policy

Posted on February 6, 2014 by janresseger

Stephanie Simon has written a major article for Politico on the growing political influence of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Simon describes the Foundation’s investment in driving policy in public education: “About $400 million is spent in the U.S.—most of that on projects intended to transform education.  Those grants go to hundreds of research and advocacy groups that often work together to amplify the foundation’s voice and extend its reach into statehouses, schoolhouses and the U.S. Department of Education.”

Jim Shelton, now a deputy secretary to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and Margot Rogers, Duncan’s chief of staff during President Obama’s first term, both moved directly from the Gates Foundation into jobs at the U.S. Department of Education. “Both were granted waivers from conflict-of-interest policies to allow them to continue to work closely with the Gates Foundation  after joining the Education Department.”

What has the Gates Foundation accomplished in terms of its policy objectives?  “In K-12 education, Gates gets substantial credit—or in some quarters, blame—for the explosion in charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately managed.  He’s transformed the way educators are evaluated, putting much more emphasis on student test scores as a measure of 

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: The Whitenizing of Detroit

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: The Whitenizing of Detroit:

The Whitenizing of Detroit

I'm heading to Detroit next week for the annual meeting of the North Dakota Study Group. I used to attend every year for at least part of the meeting. But since it was moved from near Chicago to Motown, I haven't been able to make the trip. But withdrawal has been tough. I miss hanging out with some of the best progressive educators and public intellectuals in the country who are doing some of the best democratic education and social-justice work -- people like 98-year old movement hero, Grace Lee Boggs, who will once again welcome NDSG to Detroit. So it's back on the road. Hope to see some of you there.

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As everyone knows, Detroit has become the poster child for post-industrial urban devastation, corporate dis-investment (forced bankruptcy) and white abandonment. In Detroit and other hard-hit cities in Michigan, voters no longer have the power to elect their own local government and school systems have been privatized and handed over to corporate operators. I can still remember the chilling headline in the Detroit Free Press a couple of years back, which asked: "Is Detroit Public Schools worth saving?" 

Detroit’s population loss may even leave Michigan without a black representative in Congressfor the first time since 1955, a shift that would punctuate the erosion of African-American power in a region.

Michigan's Tea Part Gov. Rick Snyder

Now Michigan's Tea Party Gov. Rick Snyder is putting the finishing touches on his plan to whitenize(ethnic cleanse?) Motown by the further push-out of thousands of African-Americans and their systema