7-16-14 Wait What? - Jonathan Pelto: Gubernatorial Candidate and A Really Nice Guy

Wait What?:

Wait What? 

Connecticut’s Gubernatorial Race Will Be Influenced by Education, Teachers (CT Magazine)

Connecticut Magazine has posted a new article entitled, “Connecticut’s Gubernatorial Race Will Be Influenced by Education, Teachers.” As Connecticut Magazine explains, For the Democratic party, the full-throttled support of teachers’ unions in Connecticut is a given rule—like “I before E, except after C.” But now, when topics such  as Common Core, teacher evaluations, charter schools […] The post

6 by jonpelto / 16min 

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

Wait What?:   Wait What? 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

by mike simpson / 7h 

The Answer Sheet 7-16-14

Answer Sheet:

Did Obama and Duncan really hear what four teachers told them?

Here is the third in a series of pieces I have been publishing about a lunch meeting that President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan had recently with four teachers from high-poverty schools that focused on education, the teaching profession and school reform. The first was a post by teacher Justin Minkel — the 2007 […]

4 by Valerie Strauss / 4h hide  //  save

Why building relationships is vital in school reform

Is it possible that some school reforms that hold promise are failing because educators are simply not given the time or resources to communicate and build meaningful relationships with each other in order to properly implement them? Or because the conditions in which they do their work do not support productive interactions?  The authors of […]

4 by Valerie Strauss / 5h 

The Answer Sheet 7-13-14

Answer Sheet: Readers react to what teachers told ObamaThere was a lot of reaction to a post I published a few days ago about what happened when four teachers from high-poverty schools sat down with President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan for lunch at the White House to talk about education, teaching and school reform. Here are some of the reactions from […]5 by Valerie Strauss / 21min

by mike simpson / 8h 

7-16-14 Schools Matter

Schools Matter:

Ken Derstine Commentary

From Defending Public Education: Which Side Are You On? by Ken Derstine July 14, 2014  The union movement of today has been transformed from what the unions were when most started in the 1930’s, increasingly taking on the characteristics of company unions. Ever since the PATCO strike in 1981, when air traffic controllers who refused an order from the Reagan administration to return to work or be f

by Jim Horn / 42min 

Andre Carson's Wife and the Mind Trust/Indy Chamber

By Doug MartinIn an attempt to privatize more schools and train students for future jobs that don't exist, the Indy Chamber of Commerce wrapped up its Pancakes and Politics education panel event yesterday in Indianapolis with the Mind Trust and Teach Plus.  US neoliberal Democrat Andre Carson's wife highlighted the event.  Andre, as I mention in Hoosier School Heist, is no friend to public educati

7 by Doug Martin / 13min 

TURNcoat, Mary Ricker, to Serve as Exec VP for Weingarten

With Ricker's election, Weingarten, Gates, and Broad are building the next generation of misleaders.  Google "TURNcoats" and "AFT" and you will get the links to understand what I'm talking about.You might start here. Principal Members are the primary liaisons & spokespersons for each local in matters related to the Teacher Union Reform Network. Name Title Organization K

by Jim Horn / 1h 

7-15-14 Schools Matter All Week

Schools Matter: Doug Martin's Letter to Gordon Hendry and the Indiana State Board of EdBy Doug Martin Once again the Indy Star has given space to complete unreality, this time by you, Gordon Hendry, the new state board of education member all goo-goo eyed over your neoliberal heroes Bill Clinton and Bart Peterson. In fact, your piece, in many ways, is an attempt for Mike Pence and the state board

by mike simpson / 34min 

7-16-14 Perdido Street School

Perdido Street School:

What Are The Chances Of An LIRR Strike Happening?

Given what happened to Mario Cuomo over an LIRR strike in 1994, the chances that Andrew Cuomo let's this one happen this year are pretty small.My sense is, the governor will jettison into the negotiations and force a settlement before the strike starts.What say you out there?Does the strike go off?Or does Cuomo jettison in as "savior"? And if you think Cuomo does jettison in and force a

by reality-based edu... / 5min 

What Does Move By US Attorney In NJ Mean For Governor Andrew Cuomo?

From the Wall Street Journal:New Jersey U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman has asked a legislative committee investigating the George Washington Bridge lane closures to hold off on calling nine important witnesses, according to people familiar with the matter.The people Mr. Fishman wants to question first includes Mike DuHaime, a top political strategist for Gov. Chris Christie ; Charles McKenna, the gove

by reality-based edu... / 12min 

Cuomo Takes $60,000 From Charter School Backer On Same Day He Spoke At Charter School Rally

Via State of the Politics, this shows up in the NY Times piece on how much Governor Cuomo has raised for his re-election campaign:He also got $60,800 from Stanley Druckenmiller, a charter school backer and former hedge manager, on March 4, the day the governor spoke at a pro-charter rally in Albany. By the end of the month, he had pushed through a bill giving charter schools in New York City some

by reality-based edu... / 1h 

7-15-14 Perdido Street School

Perdido Street School: Why I Want Arne Duncan And John King To Remain In PowerThe 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.B

by mike simpson / 7h 

Russ on Reading: New Jersey Governor Chris Christie Blinks on Teacher Evaluation

Russ on Reading: New Jersey Governor Chris Christie Blinks on Teacher Evaluation:

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie Blinks on Teacher Evaluation

Champion of corporate education reform, Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey has blinked on one of the signature tenets of that reform movement: AchieveNJ – which provides for teacher evaluation tied to student performance on standardized tests. Faced with an assembly bill that sought to delay the use of the new tests to measure schools and teachers until a task force could be established to review and report on the impact of the tests, Christie capitulated. He had threatened to veto any such bill, but faced with a 72-4 bi-partisan vote in the assembly, Christie had little choice but to compromise.

His executive order does nothing to relieve parents and children from taking the suspect tests, but it does delay the implementation of the value-added measurement of teacher performance. The executive order means that the 20 per cent of New Jersey teachers who teach language arts and math in grades 3-8 will have student performance on those tests count for 10 per cent of their evaluation in 2014-15 and 20 per cent the following year. While the executive order really just kicks the can down the road for two years, it must be seen as a clear victory for the two teacher unions, NJEA and AFT, if not for parents and students.

It is interesting to note that test scores were originally intended to account for 35 per cent of a teacher’s evaluation. Out-going New Jersey Commissioner of Education, Chris Cerf, lowered that to 30 per cent earlier this year. Now Russ on Reading: New Jersey Governor Chris Christie Blinks on Teacher Evaluation:

Textbook Budgets and Book Distribution Tightly Connected with Standardized Test Scores | janresseger

Textbook Budgets and Book Distribution Tightly Connected with Standardized Test Scores | janresseger:

Textbook Budgets and Book Distribution Tightly Connected with Standardized Test Scores

Posted on July 16, 2014 by janresseger

How do things go so wrong in a huge and tragically underfunded school district?  Meredith Broussard, an assistant professor of data journalism at Temple University, has published a stunning piece in The Atlantic that explains how the School District of Philadelphia has lost control of any accurate inventory of its textbooks and their distribution and how the school district’s financial crisis has contributed to this catastrophic situation.

The stakes are high in these times when students, teachers, schools, and school districts are being held accountable by their collective students’ standardized test scores.   According to Broussard, however, having the right textbooks is more important than ever these days because textbooks are likely to be tightly linked to the students’ eventual test scores: “This is because standardized tests are not based on general knowledge.  As I learned in the course of my investigation, they are based on specific knowledge in specific sets of books: the textbooks created by the test makers… Across the nation, standardized tests come from one of three companies: CTB McGraw Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, or Pearson.  These corporations write the tests, grade the tests, and publish the books that students use to prepare for the tests… Put simply, any teacher who wants his or her students to pass the tests has to give out books from the Big Three publishers.”  Standardized tests now require students to be able to explain the rationale for their answers even on the math test—in the way it is presented in the textbook that is designed to prepare them for the test they are going to be required to take.  And as the standards change and tests are updated, school districts need to be able to replace books that quickly become dated.

Through school visits and interviews with teachers and the School District of Philadelphia’s officer for school support services, Broussard  learned that, although a data tracking system was set up several years ago to record book purchases and quantities delivered to specific schools, budget cuts in the past two years have in most of the schools eliminated the administrative staff responsible for inputting the data.   “But we forget that data and data-collection systems are created by people.  Flesh-and-blood humans need to count the books in a school and enter the numbers into a database… But severe state funding cuts over the past several years have meant cutbacks in the school district’s administrative staff.  Even the best data-collection system is useless if there are no people available to manage it.”  And then big city school districts in very poor communities must coordinate the distribution of books despite Textbook Budgets and Book Distribution Tightly Connected with Standardized Test Scores | janresseger:

Oregon Save Our Schools: Our Schools Need Moratoriums on Common Core & High-Stakes Testing!

Oregon Save Our Schools: Our Schools Need Moratoriums on Common Core & High-Stakes Testing!:

Our Schools Need Moratoriums on Common Core & High-Stakes Testing!

The Common Core State Standards package is the linchpin of a mechanism to sell policies, high-stakes tests such as Oregon’s Smarter Balanced Assessment, confidential student data, and other practices that pose immediate harm for a whole generation of our children, public education, and democracy. We need to stop the Common Core from doing more damage.



Do not be fooled. The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) package is sold falsely as a “state” effort to achieve equal educational opportunities and assure that all U.S. students can compete globally. In reality, the CCSS package nationally centralizes education policy to serve the interests of an elite group of rich and powerful people. The CCSS sales effort threatens the real source of success and innovation in the U.S. - a decentralized system of school governance responsive to local needs and priorities.



Oregon Save Our Schools supports local and state standards to guide teaching. The CCSS package is part of a national campaign to privatize school management, de-professionalize teaching, turn learning into a sales commodity, and limit our schools to producing workers instead of informed citizens. Ways the CCSS package is built on misinformation:



1.    It is based on a false corporate media narrative about “failing” public education.



2.    The standards are unfounded, untested, and often developmentally inappropriate.



3.    These falsely labeled “state” standards are nationally mandated for federal waivers and Race To The Top grants, and Oregon Save Our Schools: Our Schools Need Moratoriums on Common Core & High-Stakes Testing!:

Mother Crusader: Vahan Gureghian's For Profit Charter Chain CSMI Ready To 'Do AC'

Mother Crusader: Vahan Gureghian's For Profit Charter Chain CSMI Ready To 'Do AC':

Vahan Gureghian's For Profit Charter Chain CSMI Ready To 'Do AC'

It sure has been a busy week in education news in New Jersey. The education blogosphere has been burning up with posts about Governor Christie's executive order regarding PARCC and Common Core, here, here, here, and here. It's been covered in all the major news outlets too, and there was even a press release to explain how the DOE will implement the Executive Order.

With all this chatter it's pretty likely that yesterday's press release about the five charters awarded their final charters, giving them the green light to open in September, will go all but unnoticed. TheStar Ledger's Peggy McGlone covered it, but pretty much just regurgitated a few clips from the press release. 

Yawn. 

Here are the five charters Commissioner Hespe has determined are worthy of your tax dollars.

For now let's take a look at one in particular. I hope you'll forgive me, but the details surrounding the approval of the Atlantic City Community Charter School (ACCCS) had slipped my mind. 

Afterall, it's hard to keep track of a charter approved in January of 2011. Yes, you read that right, ACCCS was originally approved more than three years ago.

ACCCS was one of 23 charters approved in one of Christie's blockbuster charter application rounds when he was still riding high on a wave of ed reform. Every year since then ACCCS has been given planning years. 

In July 2011 the DOE stated ACCCS and 20 other potential charters needed "additional time to plan and develop."

In July 2012 ACCCS and 9 other charters "failed to demonstrate sufficient progress towards readiness."

By July 2013 the DOE stopped reporting how many charter DIDN'T make the cut for final charters Mother Crusader: Vahan Gureghian's For Profit Charter Chain CSMI Ready To 'Do AC':

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: It was Duncan who launched Chicago schools on the trail of tiers

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: It was Duncan who launched Chicago schools on the trail of tiers:

It was Duncan who launched Chicago schools on the trail of tiers

Rahm's closing of 50 schools, a stab in the heart for the city's black community, may be the very act that brings him down in 2015. Latest polls show that it's the mayor's (and Byrd-Bennett's) mishandled school closings, along with (related) pandemic gun violence, largely in those same communities, which account for his single-digit ratings among Chicago's African-American voters. 

But the mayor's disastrous mass school-closing debacle (this according to a report, issued last month by the Chicago Educational Facilities Task Force) should be seen as a continuation of a two-tier schooling and gentrification strategy that goes back to the Daley/Duncan years. Then it was called Renaissance 2010, a plan hatched in the offices of the Civic Committee, focusing on the rapid growth of privately-run charters and selective-enrollment alternatives to neighborhood schools. That same Civic Committee would later attack its own plan as an "abysmal failure."

It was the Civic Committee's chosen one, Arne Duncan, trained and nurtured by his predecessor Paul Vallas, who initiated the move to compel Judge Kocorasto get CPS out from under the desegregation decree. In 1980, the federal Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: It was Duncan who launched Chicago schools on the trail of tiers:

empathyeducates – Why Poor Schools Can’t Win at Standardized Testing

empathyeducates – Why Poor Schools Can’t Win at Standardized Testing:

Why Poor Schools Can’t Win at Standardized Testing

ou hear a lot nowadays about the magic of big data. Getting hold of the right numbers can increase revenue, improve decision-making, or help you find a mate—or so the thinking goes. In 2009, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan told a crowd of education researchers: “I am […]

by empathy / 4min hide  //  save

100% Error Rate on Student Transfers – A ‘Miracle?’

State Superintendent John White talks with Chateau Estates Elementary School students in Kenner Wednesday, February 20, 2013. White presented the state’s new plan for reform and accountability for the 2013-14 school year during the visit to the school. (Photo by Brett Duke, Nola.com | The Times-Picayune) Introductory […]

by empathy / 4min 

7-15-14 the becoming radical | A Place for a Pedagogy of Kindness (the public and scholarly writing by P. L. Thomas, Furman University)

the becoming radical | A Place for a Pedagogy of Kindness (the public and scholarly writing by P. L. Thomas, Furman University): “Gravity”: The Unbearable Lightness of Being a WomanIn the film Gravity, Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) fulfills what appears to be a prerequisite for women in films: She undresses alone: Sandra Bullock, Gravity As a science fiction film fan, I immediately thought of Sigour

by mike simpson / 1h 

Social Movement Unionism Comes to the Teachers Unions at Last:

Social Movement Unionism Comes to the Teachers Unions at Last

JULY 16, 2014 BY LAURENSTEINER LEAVE A COMMENT

I am an activist and organizer who recently joined the fight against “education reform,” which is really code for the attempt by corporations, billionaires and hedge funds and the industry they have spawned, to privatize public education and break the teachers unions. I have been frustrated at the seeming lack of interest on the part of the unions in working with students, parents and community groups in this fight. After all, students are just as adversely impacted by “education reform” as the teachers, and thus their parents and also community organizations who serve children and their parents could be vital allies in this fight against powerful and well funded opponents.

Therefore, I was heartened by a panel I attended at the American Federation of Teachers annual conference in LA this past weekend called “Social Movement Unionism vs. Corporate Reform: Winning Strategies to Turn the Tide.” It featured six union officials from LA, New York, Houston, Philadelphia, Chicago and St. Paul sharing their efforts to bring the wider community into their organizing and the various successes they’ve had.

Opening up the discussion was Alex Caputo-Pearl, the newly installed President of UTLA, the United Teachers of Los Angeles. He defined social movement unionism as democratic, engaged with members, parents and community, explicit about fighting racial and social injustice, fighting privatization, taking people on, including Democrats and being willing to strike. He spoke of how at Crenshaw High School, he took on then LA School Superintendant Roy Romer who was head of the Democratic National Committee. He said when Romer got so annoyed and transferred him, the community helped get him transferred back.

He spoke about how when community activist Khalid Ali was beaten up by the police and charged himself with assault, the teachers took days off to support his fight and got him out. They formed the Crenshaw Cougar Coalition which was a coalition of community groups and teachers working for social change. Caputo-Perl said he wants to take the work he did in South LA and bring it city wide as the new president of UTLA.

He said he wants to make sure every school had a chapter chair and understands that they may have to strike. He said they have to start saving money for that now. He spoke of a resolution to target high need schools and put money into restorative justice.

He has a sweeping plan to reorganize UTLA which has not had certain key positions until now. Now they have a Policy Director, a Director of Research, an Executive Director and a Parent and Community Organizer. They plan to combine a contract and community campaign with a dues restructuring campaign and conduct a blitz of school site visits to talk to people and survey them face to face.

Next up was Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, CTU, famous for facing off against Chicago mayor and privatization fan Rahm Emmanuel. She said his favorable rating on education is 29%, as his entire platform is teacher bashing.

She talked about defeating his campaign to get teachers to work a Social Movement Unionism Comes to the Teachers Unions at Last:

What “Education News” is NOT supported by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation? | Reclaim Reform

What “Education News” is NOT supported by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation? | Reclaim Reform:

What “Education News” is NOT supported by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation?

Posted on July 15, 2014by Ken Previti

“Education coverage for NBCNews.com is supported by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation… ” – NBCNews

Bill Gates, who financed the creation of Common Core State Standards and other major organizations for corporate education reform, makes hundreds of millions of tax-free dollars in profits monthly from his and his foundations’ investments in high stakes testing, online programs, apps, textbooks, etc. Gates and his foundation are major profiteers in the corporate-led education reform movement which is part of the Education Industrial Complex. Foundations invest money to benefit the foundations. Foundations then pay foundation executives and investors whatever the foundations choose to pay them.

What do the vast majority of Americans know about CCSS and the CCSS compliant high stakes tests sold under a variety of brand names in various states? Whatever they read and hear in the news.

Who pays to have the news report whatever paid experts are chosen to say during interviews? Whatever conclusions are reached by research paid for by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – which also financially supports the universities and think-tank organizations that do the research? The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

In Carl Sagan’s last book, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, published in 1996, he made it clear about why so many people believed what is obviously false by referring to an intelligent man he met in New York.

“He simply accepted what the most widely available and accessible What “Education News” is NOT supported by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation? | Reclaim Reform:

Reclaim Reform