5-27-13 Curmudgucation

CURMUDGUCATION:

Reasons To Oppose Common Core (and Reasons Not To)

"I'm arguing with my brother-in-law (or uncle or cranky neighbor of postal delivery person) about the Common Core, and I need some points to really shut him up."Can we help? Lots of folks have answered this need, and done it well (in particular, I recommend Anthony Cody's "Ten Colossal Errors.") But your brother-in-law may require something a bit more pithy. Let me offer some s

by Peter Greene / 0min 

Test (In)Security

One of the features of High Stakes Testing is a level of security usually associated with large bales of money, important state secrets, and the recipe for Bush's Baked Beans. On facebook, in the category of "Ethical Dilemmas Nobody Ever Thought She'd Face," teachers are arguing about whether it's okay to photograph or copy any of the PARCC or SBA exams. I have a thought-- but first, let

9 by Peter Greene / 1h 

CURMUDGUCATION: I'm Not Blogging Today

CURMUDGUCATION: I'm Not Blogging Today: I'm Not Blogging TodayI realize that title launches me into some sort of post-modern metablogging fogbank, but hey-- it's the 21st century.Shortly I'll head out the door to march with a 158-year-old community band in a small town Memorial Day parade, followed by a program in the city park. Because this is all within walking distance, my wife and I will strol

by mike simpson / 8h 

5-25-13 Curmudgucation

CURMUDGUCATION: CAP Serves Some CCSS BaloneyThe Center for American Progress came down hard for the Common Core last week, providing yet another field test for the 100% baloney sandwich that is the Core's urban poor talking point menu.In "The Common Core Is An Opportunity for Educational Equity,", CAP asserts, "The Common Core State Standards hold promise for low-income students, st

by mike simpson / 9h 

5-27-14 Perdido Street School Week

Perdido Street School:

Looking Forward To Daily News Investigation Of In-House Grading Of Regents Exams At Charter Schools

There was a Daily News story this morning that alleged grade inflation on ELA Regents exams, reporting that scores "plummeted" in 2013 when the exams were no longer graded by teachers in-house but were instead sent to centralized locations where they were graded by other teachers.I posted about that story this morning in a piece entitled Daily News Misses A Big Part Of ELA Regents Score

by reality-based edu... / 8min 

Will The Working Families Party Endorse Cuomo?

Cuomo is the official nominee of the Democratic Party, even garnering support from "progressives" like Bill de Blasio and John Liu.The criminals at the Independence Party are also looking for Cuomo to be on their ballot line, though Cuomo said he hasn't made up his mind about that (the paperwork he filled out says otherwise.)Now it's the Working Families Party's turn to decide what to do

by reality-based edu... / 1h 

Daily News Misses A Big Part Of ELA Regents Score Plummet Story

The Daily News claims cheating teachers were the main reason scores on the 2013 ELA Regents exam fell: Scores on English Regents exams for high schoolers plummeted when the city cracked down on grade-fudging teachers, a Daily News analysis shows. Thousands of public school students failed the high-stakes state tests in 2013 after the city instituted new grading rules to prevent score inflation. A

by reality-based edu... / 2h 

5-24-14 Perdido Street School Week

Perdido Street School: Perdido Street School WeekMurdoch Company Pays Andrew Cuomo At Least $700,000 For His MemoirOkay, this is absurd:ALBANY—Gov. Andrew Cuomo's book deal with HarperCollins is worth at least $700,000, according to a disclosure form Cuomo filed last week.The publishing house is planning to release Cuomo's autobiography, “All Things Possible: Setbacks and Success in Politics and L

by mike simpson / 9h 

In Memoriam of WWII Latino Veterans and Their Families | Cloaking Inequity

In Memoriam of WWII Latino Veterans and Their Families | Cloaking Inequity:

In Memoriam of WWII Latino Veterans and Their Families

Thank you to all of the veterans who have courageously served our country. This post is dedicated to my tía Minnie Cadena who recently passed and was a participant in the University of Texas Voce Oral History Project and my tío John G. Reyes who was KIA 1944.

This post is also dedicated to the all of the Heilig, Scott, Vasquez and Cadena who have served our country bravely.

In a new chapter we honor the memory of Latino veterans and their families. This chapter was recently published in the new book Latina/os and World War II: Mobility, Agency, and Ideology.

The citation for our chapter is:

Rodríguez, A. A., Vasquez Heilig, J. & Prochnow, A. (2014). Higher Education, the G.I. Bill, and the Post-War Lives of WWII Latino Veterans and Their Families. In M. Rivas-Rodriguez & B. Olguin (Eds.), Latina/os & World War II: Mobility, agency and ideology, Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

Higher Education, the G.I. Bill, and the Post-War Lives of WWII Latino Veterans and Their Families

In 1897, a federal district court in Rodriguez v. Texas declared that the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and subsequent federal policies, conferred upon Mexican Americans a “White” racial status for naturalization and classification purposes. Thus, despite the “separate but equal” decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, Latina/os should have had equal access to the same public schools as Whites. However, racial bias was pervasive. Mexican American “greasers” faced cultural prejudices analogous to the racial animus suffered by African Americans, with several high profile lynchings, and city governments like Houston actively encouraging repatriation during the Great Depression.[i] Professor E. E. Davis of the University of Texas, asserted in a 1923 publication that White American children did not want to attend school with, “the dirty ‘greaser’ type of Mexican child,” and should be required to do so. Instead, Davis advocated that Mexican children be placed in separate schools until they were able to contribute positively to society.[ii]    It is within this context that we will explore the experiences of Latino WWII veterans in U.S. schools pre- and post- war.

This chapter begins by briefly reviewing established scholarship on the structural racism that Latina/os faced in the U.S. educational system. It then describes the elementary and secondary educational experiences of several Latino veterans from The University of Texas WWII oral history project database. We conclude with profiles of three WWII In Memoriam of WWII Latino Veterans and Their Families | Cloaking Inequity:

Send Your Email to Governor Fallin about Common Core | Missouri Education Watchdog

Send Your Email to Governor Fallin about Common Core | Missouri Education Watchdog:

Send Your Email to Governor Fallin about Common Core

inShare

Restore Oklahoma Public Education (ROPE) has a request for those in other states opposed to Common Core: Contact Governor Mary Fallin for her signature on HB3399 which would eradicate Common Core from Oklahoma.  She can set the precedence for other states to exit the Initiative and regain true control of their state’s standards.  Missouri needs to be added to the list of citizens Governor Fallin hears from on Common Core!  Let’s get busy and send her our emails supporting the House and Senate in its historic vote to do away with Common Core State Standards in Oklahoma.

From ROPE:

************************************************

As we told you Saturday, HB3399 (the repeal and replacement of Common Core) passed from both the Oklahoma House and Senate by an overwhelming majority Friday the 23rd. Governor Fallin has until June 2 to sign HB3399 to sign the bill into law.  If she chooses not to act, the bill will die by pocket veto.

If you are a member of the Oklahoma GOP whether a Republican voter or an office holder, please take a moment to sign this petition/letter from our State Committeewoman Carolyn McClarty asking Governor Fallin to sign HB3399.

In just 24 hours over a holiday weekend, there are HUNDREDS of SIGNATURES on the petition, and our mailbox has HUNDREDS of letters!  So far we have letters from CA, GA, HI, ID, WA, NJ, WI, CT, PA, OH, MN, NV, WY, CO, KS, and SD!!  We can’t stop there, though.  We need THOUSANDS to make our point!  Be sure to pass this email/info on to friends/family/neighbors!

Not only that, but we’ve made national news!  Our letter writing campaign has been featured in Breitbart News and advertised on the Truth in American Education network.

Go here to find instructions and sample letters for Oklahoma residents and those from other states and get ‘er done!

As usual, thank you so much for all your efforts to fight Common Core in Oklahoma – without you we’d NEVER have made it this far!

Very Sincerely,

Jenni White

President

Restore Oklahoma Public Education

www.RestoreOkPublicEducation.com

Send Your Email to Governor Fallin about Common Core | Missouri Education Watchdog:

Obama Administration’s College Rating Proposal Threatens Core Educational Values | janresseger

Obama Administration’s College Rating Proposal Threatens Core Educational Values | janresseger:

Obama Administration’s College Rating Proposal Threatens Core Educational Values

Posted on May 27, 2014 by janresseger

As May turns to June and summer weather arrives, this blog will take a week-long break.  Back on Tuesday, June 3.

Over the weekend, the NY Times reported on Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s planned rating system for American colleges and universities.  At a time when we have seen an explosion of marginal, for-profit, often on-line institutions of higher education siphoning federal loans and grants that may never be repaid, I can understand that the federal government would seek to protect its investment, but surely our recent experiment with school accountability that ranks K-12 schools based on their students’ test scores should cause us to proceed cautiously.  There has been considerable collateral damage.

Caution is not part of the Administration’s plan, however.  Officials claim the Administration’s rating system will be in place by the end of the year: “Mr. Obama and his aides say colleges and universities that receive a total of $150 billion each year in federal loans and grants must prove they are worth it. The problem is acute, they insist: At too many schools, tuition is going up, graduation rates are going down, and students are leaving with enormous debt and little hope of high-paying jobs.”  The NY Times reports that, “Mr. Obama’s system would not rank schools numerically but would give them grades or ratings like ‘excellent,’ ‘good’ ‘fair’ or ‘poor.’”

Cecilia Muñoz, the director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, has pretty much announced this is a done deal: “For those who are making the argument that we shouldn’t do this, I think those folks could fairly have the impression that we’re not listening. There is an element to this conversation which is, ‘We hope to God you don’t do this.’ Our answer to that is: ‘This is happening.’ ”  And Arne Duncan, in his usual disdain for the status quo, commented: “We have a financial and moral obligation to be good stewards of these dollars. To defend thestatus quo, for me, you can’t do that.”

According to the recent  NY Times report and earlier coverage of plans to rate colleges, the factors will be graduation rates, price of tuition and fees, debt load students carry after they graduate, and even how much money students make after graduation, although this last data will be difficult to collect. Valuing salaries as a measure of educational quality is also Obama Administration’s College Rating Proposal Threatens Core Educational Values | janresseger:

Urban, Rural Schools Connected by Inequality - Bridging Differences - Education Week

Urban, Rural Schools Connected by Inequality - Bridging Differences - Education Week:

Urban, Rural Schools Connected by Inequality

By Guest Blogger on May 27, 2014 8:20 AM

Author and advocate Mike Klonsky again writes to Deborah Meier today. The two are currently co-blogging on Bridging Differences.

Deb,

In last week's post, you write, "we've both avoided looking at the picture as it plays out in smaller towns and rural areas."  I was considering your points on urban/rural this week, after reading Ta-Nehisi Coates' powerful and compelling piece "The Case for Reparations" in the June issue of The Atlantic. It's a narrative that can lead only to the conclusion that educational inequity is tightly bound up with the legacy of Southern slavery (America's original sin?), Jim Crow, and then Northern urban racial discrimination in education and housing.

Coates makes the case for reparations, saying: 

"An America that asks what it owes its most vulnerable citizens is improved and humane. An America that looks away is ignoring not just the sins of the past but the sins of the present and the certain sins of the future. ... More important than any single check cut to any African American, the payment of reparations would represent America's maturation out of the childhood myth of its innocence into a wisdom worthy of its founders."

I agree. This statement parallels in many respects the 2006 AERA convention speech given by education scholar Gloria Ladson-Billings. In this speech, titled "From the Achievement Gap to the Education Debt: Understanding Achievement in U.S. Schools," Ladson-Billings called for dumping the term "achievement gap," which unfairly portrays black and Latino  students as "defective and lacking," while penalizing them and their school for "low performance" on tests. She suggested the term "education debt," moving to a discourse that holds our society accountable for the public education of all our children—not just our own or the ones we're paid to teach.

There's no avoiding rural school issues. If I tend to focus more these days on the struggles in urban and suburban education, it's because that's where I live, teach, and do my research.

But urbanites are not the only ones pushing back against the corporate "reformers." We can't Urban, Rural Schools Connected by Inequality - Bridging Differences - Education Week:

What Parents Should Know About School Bonds And Our LAUSD Citizens’ Oversight Committee: – redqueeninla

What Parents Should Know About School Bonds And Our LAUSD Citizens’ Oversight Committee: – redqueeninla:



What Parents Should Know About School Bonds And Our LAUSD Citizens’ Oversight Committee:

Written by redqueeninla in Education, LAUSD

There is a political brouhaha going on right now that really deserves your attention. Your attention as a parent, as a taxpayer, as a citizen.

It involves a pretty obscure committee known as the “Citizens’ Bond Oversight Committee” (BOC: www.laschools.org/bond) – I know, I’d never heard of it until recently either.  [NB:  The BOC website has been offline for several days; an archived version is available in the first hyperlink].

Turns out all that money we as tax payers empower agencies to borrow as “bonds” for a specific purpose or project – a whole endeavor with terms I don’t understand well – that money needs “watchdogging” because just mandating it happen doesn’t say how it will happen, or by whom, etc. Such appropriations become a situation ripe for abuse, to which alert minds have been thinking about and attending the danger for a good long while.

For example there is a whole League of Bond Oversight Committees. This tactic of funding specific projects is common enough and involves large enough sums of money, overseen by rank enough novices that all across the state Oversight Committees have been formed to watch the process and these themselves end up needing instruction. Check it out: http://www.calboc.org/ .

And right now we have a Citizens’ Bond Oversight Committee in LA that is under attack. It is supposed to be an independent task force with appointees from various interest groups charged with scrutinizing the distribution of funds mandated by the taxpayers specifically for the purpose of funding school construction and infrastructure. Our Board of Education ensures that the appointees to this committee made by various special interest groups are fit to serve (as in not, say, felons or pedophiles), but they are not to influence the What Parents Should Know About School Bonds And Our LAUSD Citizens’ Oversight Committee: – redqueeninla:

Now you have the NCLB waiver, now you don’t :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet

Now you have the NCLB waiver, now you don’t :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:

Now you have the NCLB waiver, now you don’t

by Kimberly Beltran

(Wash.) K-12 schools here are adjusting their budgets to deal with the $40 million impact of having their federal No Child Left Behind waiver revoked.

But any staffing or programs lost to the impending shift are likely to be offset by increased revenues from the improving state economy as well as additional school funding ordered under a 2012 court ruling.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the state’s top education official vowed that work will continue toward meeting all waiver requirements in hopes of having it reinstated in 2015.

“The (U.S.) Department of Education has said, ‘you know, we have not extended your waiver for the ‘14-‘15 school year but if state law does change they you can reapply,” said Nathan Olson, spokesman for state Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn.

The issue, not unique to Washington, is that the waivers require teacher evaluation systems based in part on student test scores.

Forty-three states, plus Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and a group of eight California school districts have received waivers – issued by the Obama Administration starting in 2011 to provide relief from some of the more onerous requirements of the top education law in the land.

The president also created his $4.3 billion Race to the Top fund to encourage states to implement new teacher evaluation systems and other changes.

Only one state – Ohio – appears to have adopted all elements of the program’s teacher evaluation requirements, according to an analysis released earlier this month by the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences. (See Cabinet Report, May 2)

Other waiver holders have struggled to reach agreement with their teachers, who balk at having their performance – and under some proposals, their pay and job status – tied to student test Now you have the NCLB waiver, now you don’t :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:

Bullying, lack of counselors are barriers to child wellness

(Va.) One in five high school students in the U.S. was bullied last year, according to results from a new survey on student health and safety. But girls, the report found, experienced cyberbullying at twice the rate of boys.

by Carrie Marovich / 6h 

The 2008 Common Core Sales Job: Part Three | deutsch29

The 2008 Common Core Sales Job: Part Three | deutsch29:

The 2008 Common Core Sales Job: Part Three

May 27, 2014

In 2008, the National Governors Association (NGA), the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), and Achieve, Inc., released a report, Benchmarking for Success: Ensuring U.S. Students Receive a World-class Education.

I have examined this report in two previous posts.  In Part One of my series on this report, I considered the report’s absence of discussions of national debt in promoting the faulty goal of  “global competition” via nationally standardized education. In Part Two, I consider the individuals authoring, “advising on,” and financially supporting the report.

In this third and final post, I examine the idea of “benchmarking,” which is supposed to be the primary purpose of the NGA/CCSSO report.

Nevertheless, this report is not a detailed accounting of benchmarking specific standards. It is only an argument in favor of the idea of international benchmarking of American education standards.

The “benchmarking” promoted by this report is hardly sufficient for determining national “success.”

“Benchmarking” to Beat All Others

The report begins with stating that the purpose of international (educational) benchmarking is “to identify and learn from top performers and rapid improvers.” The question is, “top performers” and “rapid improvers” in what sense?

Why, in terms of nebulously-defined, internationally-compared “graduation rates” and, of course, on international tests such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS).

“Graduation rate” is can be defined in any number of ways. One might count only individuals who make it to high school, or who make it to the final year of high school, or who complete high school in a given number of years, or who technically quit high school but complete some alternative course of study.

Graduation rates are also affected by the courses studied. Some “graduates” might The 2008 Common Core Sales Job: Part Three | deutsch29:

Research: INEQUALITY IN TEACHING AND SCHOOLING: SUPPORTING HIGH-QUALITY TEACHING AND LEADERSHIP IN LOW-INCOME SCHOOLS - @coolcatteacher

Research: INEQUALITY IN TEACHING AND SCHOOLING: SUPPORTING HIGH-QUALITY TEACHING AND LEADERSHIP IN LOW-INCOME SCHOOLS - @coolcatteacher:

 Research: INEQUALITY IN TEACHING AND SCHOOLING: SUPPORTING HIGH-QUALITY TEACHING AND LEADERSHIP IN LOW-INCOME SCHOOLS

Excerpted from A Notion at Risk: Preserving Public Education as an Engine for Social Mobility, Richard D. Kahlenberg, Editor
2000

by Linda Darling-Hammond and Laura Post

This important excerpt of a larger book hits on the quality of teachers and the success of children in low-income schools. If you want a better school, spend money on staff development and helping your teachers become more proficient. This article is full of research and important topics of conversation among teachers and policy makers.

“Longitudinal studies in Tennessee and Dallas, Texas found that differences in teacher effectiveness are an extremely strong determinant of differences in student learning, far outweighing the effects of differences in class size and heterogeneity.” P 128-129 http://www.stanford.edu/~ldh/publications/LDH-Post-Inequality.pdf

If you haven’t read this article, take the time to dive through with a highlighter and prepare to discuss the implications. Teacher quality and teacher education makes a big difference. Sadly, the first thing most states have cut is teacher training with some states even making the move to limit teacher education and make sure they are “in the classroom.”

While being in the classroom is important, being well educated is even more important. I find that when I learn new methods of teaching and strategies, I become a better teacher through the practice of working to improve my classroom.

I’ve put this article in my Pocket app to read more deeply this summer.

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES:

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Gov. Chris Christie to Mayor Baraka

"I also made very clear to [Baraka] that it is the state government that runs the school system in Newark, and that while I will talk with him and hear his ideas, that we are the deciders on what happens in the school system.” -- Thom Hartman

Chicago Alderman "Slow Eddie" Burke

“There are a lot of weirdos roaming around..." -- Sun-Times

Times reporter Jennifer Medina

In the car, the police said, were three semiautomatic handguns, along with magazines loaded with more than 400 rounds of ammunition — all bought legally at local gun stores. -- New York Times

Pope Francis

"The time has come for everyone to find  Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES: