7-15-14 Wait What? - Jonathan Pelto: Gubernatorial Candidate and A Really Nice Guy

Wait What?:

  Wait What? 

Pelto calls on Malloy Administration to reverse course on unfair health care policies

Pelto calls on Malloy Administration to reverse course on unfair health care policies As recently reported in the Connecticut media, the Malloy administration is developing a new “State innovation Model (SIM) that would negatively impact the availability of care for hundreds of thousands of Connecticut residents. Education and Democracy Party candidate for governor, Jonathan Pelto […] The post Pel

9 by jonpelto / 1h 

Why students leave high school (By Wendy Lecker)

Wendy Lecker’s latest commentary piece for the Stamford Advocate and Hearst Media Group pushes aside the rhetoric coming from the corporate education reform industry and its allies like Governor Dannel “Dan” Malloy and his Commissioner of Education, Stefan Pryor. Instead Lecker lays out the real issues about graduation rates and why high school students leave […] The post Why students leave high s

5 by jonpelto / 1h hide  //  save

FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES (aka politics today) by Carmen Lopez

Carmen Lopez is not only a former superior court judge, but she is a truth teller.  Below is an commentary piece she wrote earlier in the month, a version of which was published in the CT Post. It  provides a view into the political world of Connecticut, in which having friends in high places trumps […] The post FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES (aka politics today) by Carmen Lopez appeared first on Wait Wha

3 by jonpelto / 1h 

7-14-14 Wait What? - Jonathan Pelto: Gubernatorial Candidate and A Really Nice Guy

Wait What?:   Wait What? Connecticut deserves a government that will tell its citizens the truthAnd a Governor who has the courage and conviction to work to set Connecticut back on the right path. As the CT Mirror explains in the series on where the candidates stand of the state budget, Pelto: State budget deficit reveals a broken fiscal system;  Former state Rep. Jonathan Pelto doesn’t have any t

by mike simpson / 8h 

7-15-14 Fred Klonsky | Daily posts from a retired public school teacher

Fred Klonsky | Daily posts from a retired public school teacher who is just looking at the data.:

Ten minute drawing. Laughable. Joyous.

1 by Fred Klonsky / 3min 

Don’t use Staples.

As a state-wide elected delegate to the NEA RA I get reimbursed for most of my expenses. I have to fill out forms and provide receipts as it is carefully monitored by the IRS. And who knows? Maybe the NSA too. Rather than make copies of the forms at home, I normally go to the neighborhood Staples. But not this time. I am boycotting Staples. And so should you. The United States Postal Service and

12 by Fred Klonsky / 1h hide  //  save

Hinsdale’s Skoda has a perverse notion of transparency.

Hinsdale board member is locked out of a press conference called by board president Richard Skoda. He calls it “transparency.” The Battle of Hinsdale High School District 68 continues. Teacher union-bashing board president Richard Skoda claims to be acting in the interest of transparency by locking out the community and other board members. A Hinsdale teacher writes me that, “The community respon

1 by Fred Klonsky / 1h 

7-14-14 Fred Klonsky | Daily posts from a retired public school teacher

Fred Klonsky | Daily posts from a retired public school teacher who is just looking at the data.: There’s a national assault on teacher pensions. I wonder if the AFT and the NEA heard?Michael “Macho Man” Mulgrew. Yesterday I began the afternoon watching the live streaming of the debate over Common Core. What could be more moving than hearing my friend Michelle Gunderson speaking about the damage C

by mike simpson / 8h 

7-15-14 Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day… | …For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL

Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day… | …For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL:

The Best Funny Videos To Help Teach Grammar – Help Me Find More

© 2014 brett jordan, Flickr | CC-BY | via Wylio Earlier today, I posted Weird Al Weird Al Yankovic’s new funny video teaching grammar (I’ve also posted it below). Then, Heather Wolpert-Gawron showed me another funny one, that’s also posted below. I figured there have got to be more out there, so I invite readers to contribute the ones you know about — I’ll post them here and, of course, give you f

by Larry Ferlazzo / 58min 

Funny Video: Weird Al Yankovic Teaches Us Grammar In “Word Crimes”

by Larry Ferlazzo / 29min 

Wednesday Is 45th Anniversary Of Apollo 11 Launch — Here Are Related Resources

© 1969 NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Flickr | CC-BY | via Wylio Tomorrow is the 45th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11th, which landed on the moon. You might be interested in The Best Sites To Learn About The Apollo 11 Moon Landing.

by Larry Ferlazzo / 5min 

Two New & Intriguing Efforts To Provide Home Internet Access To Students

© 2012 Lars Plougmann, Flickr | CC-BY-SA | via Wylio I’ve written a lot about our school’s efforts and the efforts of others to provide home internet access to low-income students and their families (see The Best Resources For Learning About Schools Providing Home Computers & Internet Access To Students). Two new and intriguing efforts have just begun — one by Facebook and the other by the New

by Larry Ferlazzo / 4min 

Video: Shelly Terrell & I Talk About My Books

Shelly Terrell and I spent about fifteen minutes talking about some of my books (you can see free resources related to all of them here) last week, and you can see the interview below: Our conversation was part of a day-long series of interviews Shelly did with education authors (I don’t know how she was able to sustain her energy!). The above video is set to start at the beginning of our conver

by Larry Ferlazzo / 19min 

New Study Reinforces Previous Ones Showing SEL Lessons Need To Be Short & Simple

© 2013 elPadawan, Flickr | CC-BY-SA | via Wylio As regular readers of this blog and my books know, I’m an advocate of teaching Social Emotional Learning skills — and that I think they need to be simple so that individual teachers can integrate them easily with their regular classroom instruction. Previous research has also found that using that strategy is the best way to go (see Social Skills Tra

by Larry Ferlazzo / 7h hide  //  save

Video: Funny, Thoughtful, Strong Speech By New NEA President

Lily Eskelen Garcia, the new National Education Association President (you can read more about it at my previous post, Our National Union Has A New President!) just spoke at the American Federation Of Teachers Convention. It’s definitely worth watching:

by Larry Ferlazzo / 7h 

7-14-14 Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day… | …For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL

Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day… | …For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL: Infographic: “Around The World In 80 Hats”I’m adding this infographic to The Best Sites For Learning About The World’s Different Cultures:by Larry Ferlazzo / 8h7-13-14 Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day… | …For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFLLarry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day… | …For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL: Latest Re

by mike simpson / 8h 

7-15-14 Jersey Jazzman

Jersey Jazzman:

@GovChristie's Executive Order Lays Bare the Fundamental Problems with AchieveNJ

Yesterday, Chris Christie tried to play the "reasonable" reformer with his executive order on testing:First, he announced an executive order creating a new state task force -- entirely appointed by Christie – to study the effectiveness of state testing as a whole, including the upcoming PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) tests and the Common Core Stat

5 by Duke / 28min 

Christie's Last Teacher Evaluation Panel Was a Disaster

Big news today in the New Jersey education policy world:Following several days of intensive discussion last week, agreement was reached on several key issues related to standardized testing and its ultimate role in teacher evaluation.  NJEA was at the center of conversations with legislators, the Christie administration and the Department of Education (DoE), which led to two key announcements toda

45 by Duke / 10h 

7-13-14 Jersey Jazzman

Jersey Jazzman: Karen Lewis, Ras Baraka, and "Worried" White PeopleFellow white people, heed my advice, please:Relax.Take a stroll. Enjoy a decaf macchiato. Do some yoga, And stop reading the newspaper, which these days seems to be full of pieces by some more of our fellow worried white people -- in this case, the very reformy and very white Tom Moran -- designed to make us very, very...

by mike simpson / 18h 

7-15-14 Perdido Street School

Perdido Street School:

Common Core Considered "Radioactive" And "Toxic" These Days

The AFT leadership may have decided that the Common Core still holds "promise" but much of the rest of America is looking to bury the standards in the same place they put nuclear waste:The National Governors Association (NGA) owns the copyright – along with the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) – to the Common Core State Standards. When the nationalized standards are mention

by reality-based edu... / 6min 

Why I Want Arne Duncan And John King To Remain In Power

The NEA has called for Secretary of Education Privatization Arne Duncan's ouster.The AFT put him on some kind of improvement plan (a lame way of saying they were calling for his ouster without actually calling for his ouster.)Many rank-and-file teachers across the country have called for Duncan to step down or be fired.But you know who hasn't called for Duncan's firing?The functionaries on the cor

by reality-based edu... / 1h 

7-14-14 Perdido Street School

Perdido Street School: Is Chris Christie In An "Unholy Alliance" With Andrew Cuomo Over The Bridgegate Scandal?Fred Dicker raises the question in his NY Post column today:One of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s jobs as this year’s head of the Republican Governors Association is to help elect more GOP governors, but don’t tell that to people working on Astorino’s campaign. “Chris Christie

by mike simpson / 8h 

The Evolution of Denial in Atlanta Test-Score Cheating Scandal | janresseger

The Evolution of Denial in Atlanta Test-Score Cheating Scandal | janresseger:

The Evolution of Denial in Atlanta Test-Score Cheating Scandal

Posted on July 15, 2014 by janresseger

Rachel Aviv’s extraordinary New Yorker magazine essay, Wrong Answer, traces the evolution of the Atlanta Public Schools standardized test cheating scandal.  Aviv describes how school administrators, driven by the Adequate Yearly Progress requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act, wielded pressure and shame over several years to recalibrate the moral compass of one middle school’s most dedicated teacher.

A researcher at the American Mathematical Society tells Aviv about Campbell’s Law, “a principle that describes the risks of using a single indicator to measure complex social phenomena: the greater the value placed on a quantitative measure, like test scores, the more likely it is that the people using it and the process it measures will be corrupted.”  The principle sounds abstract, but what happened to the teachers at Parks Middle School was anything but dry.  Little by little, year after year, more and more teachers got involved; administrators condoned the cheating or looked the other way; and everybody celebrated the miraculous scores despite that they were utterly improbable.

Despite that Atlanta’s superintendent Beverly Hall offered cash awards to the staff at schools where scores continued to rise, Aviv’s story is not about the power of prizes and money.  Damany Lewis, a middle school math teacher and the protagonist of Aviv’s story, wants desperately to keep his job precisely because he is so dedicated to serving students whose poverty is so severe that he collects their clothes to wash when they have no other options.  He finds himself coaching a host of athletic teams along with the chess club as he devotes his life The Evolution of Denial in Atlanta Test-Score Cheating Scandal | janresseger:

Art and Public Space | Bill Ayers

Art and Public Space | Bill Ayers:

Art and Public Space

What does it mean to be human today, trudging into the 21st Century?
How can we act ethically in our hurried and bewildering world?
How did we get here, and where do we want to go?
Is there a Public Space? In fact, is there a Public?
What is our diagram of the known world, and how might things be otherwise?
What kind of society do we want to inhabit?
Who do we want to be as people? As a public?
The notable erosion of “the public” in US life has taken place in multiple ways. In language, the demonization of public escalated in the Reagan years and continues until this moment: public welfare, public health, public workers (remember the air traffic controllers?), public benefits, public parks, roads and bridges, public space, public schools. Are criminal courts open to the public when the family members are seated and patrolled behind bullet-proof plexi-glass and attempting to listen through the squawk and screech of voices transmitted by microphone?
In a more complex domain, the content of public representation is seized by corporate/military powers, to be observed by the public: the World Trade Center momument, the ubiquitous military men on horses across town centers, the tiny open spaces in front of skyscrapers or inside giant corporate lobbies with commissioned sculptures and enormous canvases.
Yet all is in contention as well. The lively public participants not only adopted and adore the Maya Linn Vietnam Memorial or the sculptures in Millenium Park, they embellish them daily and make the art their own.
Across the land, the valorization of the Confederacy vies with the stench of the slave market. As in the occupied land of Palestine/Israel, so too in the settler land of the US: street-signs, uprisings, and art in contention become markers of excavated history: Wounded Knee, Montgomery, John Brown Lives!, immigrant rights marches, Watts, the Ludlow Massacre, Occupy, Haymarket and Seneca Falls. Sometimes humor, wildly embraced by diverse publics: the Chicago cows, for Art and Public Space | Bill Ayers:

NYC Educator: Does AFT Merit a Member Boycott?

NYC Educator: Does AFT Merit a Member Boycott?:

Does AFT Merit a Member Boycott?

AFT reps, not a single one of whom represents me or my school, took time out to assemble at a local Staples to protest their use of private workers to replace US Post Office workers. The President of NYSUT cut her Staples card in half to show she meant business. After all, we value union, and we don't want unqualified people handling the mail.

But according to the AFT reps, none of whom represent me or my school, it's OK for unqualified people who aren't in a nurses' union to issue medical care, and so they passed a resolution saying people could get a little training and do the work of medical professionals. Perhaps the AFT reps have determined the work of medical professionals is a lot less demanding than that of delivering packages and envelopes. It's tough to say since none of them consult with me or anyone I represent about anything, ever.

But since one action so mirrors the other, it's only fair that one reaction mirror the other as well. So I guess the only logical thing to do is boycott the AFT. This begs the question--how do we do that?

After all, AFT simply takes money from our paychecks. We have no say on that. Then they hold conventions, on our dime, conventions in which we get no representation whatsoever. I'm chapter leader of the largest school in Queens, and they don't give a golly gosh darn what any of us think about anything. Otherwise, how could they fail to demand the removal of corporate clown Arne Duncan? How could they continue with the preposterous charade that the problem of Common Core is how it was rolled out?

In fact, it was rolled out exactly as it should have, and that's why 70% of our kids failed the tests. It's pretty clear to me, when Arne Duncan slanders suburban moms, that it was designed to make us think all public schools are failing. The problem, for demagogues like NYC Educator: Does AFT Merit a Member Boycott?:

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Events of past two weeks gives us hope

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Events of past two weeks gives us hope:

Events of past two weeks gives us hope

Donna Brazile

“The very premise of ‘market-driven education reform’ rests on the fallacy that the public school system is in crisis, and that the only solution is to let the market pick winners and losers.” -- Donna Brazile

Wow! What an amazing couple of weeks this has been.

It started with the NEA, the nation's largest union, condemning current testing lunacy and calling for Arne Duncan to resign. The AFT delegates (when allowed to speak) essentially followed suit except for leaders Randi Weingarten and Michael Mulgrew desperately trying to hang on to a failed Common Core and hoping to pull Duncan's chestnuts out of the fire with a wimpy call for his remediation rather than firing. UFT Pres. Mulgrew even threatened to punch anyone in the face who tried to, "take away my Common Core.” Time for him to go, along with Duncan.

Alex Caputo-Pearl

But the very fact that a real debate broke out at an AFT convention and that rank-and-file voices were heard (especially from Chicago), offers a ray of hope that union democracy will somehow triumph. I was especially impressed with the Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Events of past two weeks gives us hope:

Willing to die for justice? Comparing post-Katrina student activism to Freedom Summer | Hechinger Report

Willing to die for justice? Comparing post-Katrina student activism to Freedom Summer | Hechinger Report:

Willing to die for justice? Comparing post-Katrina student activism to Freedom Summer

By Andre Perry

Two of the most significant student movements in the United States occurred in Jackson, Mississippi and New Orleans – separated by less than a three hours’ drive and fifty years. En masse, high school students and coeds migrated to these cities leading up to Freedom Summer of 1964, and they came in the years immediately following Hurricane Katrina. Those cities served as classrooms that taught students sociology lessons like no other, but what parallels and distinctions can we draw between the two time periods?

I asked that question to panelists who participated in a discussion and screening of Freedom Riders, a documentary directed by Stanley Nelson Jr., that was hosted by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities (LEH).

Click to read more columns.

“External voices can certainly illuminate conditions of the oppressed,” said Brian Boyles of LEH. Some accounts have more than 1,000 youth volunteers, primarily from northern colleges, participated in some form of non-violent direct action during Freedom Summer. In the summer of 1961, a multiracial coalition of students road buses to protest the non-enforcement of segregated buses and accommodations across the interstate. Freedom Riders traveled directly into brutal mob violence and Klux Klux Klan terrorism. Freedom Riders consequently endured beatings by the hands of people who hand very different perspectives of community.

In the summer of 1964, youth erected approximately 30 Freedom Schools that taught a curriculum that included black history, the philosophy of the Civil Rights Movement, leadership development as well as remedial instruction in reading and math. The nadir of Freedom Summer occurred with the Klan killings of James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael “Mickey” Schwerner who all worked on the voter registration efforts. Still, the non-violent, civil disobedience and grassroots activism of young women and men from 1961 to 1964 have been deemed widely influential in the passage of the Civil Rights Act and other related legislation.

“If people think there’s a lack of urgency people are not listening,” — M.K. Nguyen, St. Paul Promise Neighborhoods

Freedom Summer taught us that students don’t and can’t wait for adults to bring social justice.

Katrina also sounded an alarm to which students responded. Almost immediately after the breeches in the levees in 2005, undergraduates from all over the country came to assist in New Orleans’ recovery. They came to help rebuild schools as part ofWilling to die for justice? Comparing post-Katrina student activism to Freedom Summer | Hechinger Report:

Free college idea picks up momentum

Adele Williams hears from a lot of her friends from high school about their struggles to afford the cost of college. “I have a best friend who goes to a public university, and she’s in quite a lot of debt,” said Williams. Higher and higher tuition, she said, “is just a scary thought for people to face.” Except for her. Williams doesn’t pay any tuition at all. She goes to Alice Lloyd College in Ken

3 by Jon Marcus / 2h