7-31-14 Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day… | …For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL

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

Two Videos Showing People “In The Flow”

Here are two videos that I think show people exhibiting “flow.” I’m adding them to The Best Resources For Learning About “Flow.” Let me know if you have other suggestions.

by Larry Ferlazzo / 26min 

Three Good Slides On “Flow”

I’ve been doing some research and writing on the concept of “flow” (and continue to interested in hearing suggestions of movie/TV scenes where the characters are exhibiting it). In re-looking at Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s TED Talk (which I’ve embedded at the bottom of this post), three of his slides stood out to me, so I took screenshots to share here and at The Best Resources For Learning About “F

by Larry Ferlazzo / 7min 

Nice Interactive: “Good Country Index”

The Good Country Index is an interactive map that ranks each country in a variety of areas, including culture, science, prosperity, etc. The rankings are based on data from the United Nations, and you can find more of an explanation here. Thanks to Google Maps Mania for the tip.

by Larry Ferlazzo / 30min 

Useful Infographic On Immigration Reform

Though I wish it didn’t use the term “illegal immigrant,” I’m still adding this infographic to The Best Resources About The New Push For Immigration Reform: Courtesy of: Infographic World

by Larry Ferlazzo / 2min 

More Resources On The Connection Between Exercising & Learning

© 2011 Brad Barth, Flickr | CC-BY | via Wylio Here are new additions to The Best Resources On How Exercise Helps Learning: Here’s How Kids Can Get Better Grades is from TIME. Can Exercise Close the Achievement Gap? is from Pacific Standard. Study shows elementary and middle schools can get students moving, not just thinking is from Eureka Alert. The Role of Exercise in Bolstering Memory is from Ps

by Larry Ferlazzo / 2min 

July’s (2014) Best Tweets — Part Five

Every month I make a few short lists highlighting my choices of the best resources I through (and learned from) Twitter, but didn’t necessarily include them in posts here on my blog. I’ve already shared in earlier posts several new resources I found on Twitter — and where I gave credit to those from whom I learned about them. Those are not included again in post. If you don’t use Twitter, you can

by Larry Ferlazzo / 7h hide  //  save

This Week’s “Round-Up” Of Useful Posts & Articles On Education Policy

© 2009 Travis, Flickr | CC-BY | via Wylio Here are some recent good posts and articles on educational policy issues: “Stupid, absurd, non-defensible”: New NEA president Lily Eskelsen García on the problem with Arne Duncan, standardized tests and the war on teachers is from Salon. The Problem Isn’t Teacher Recruiting; It’s Retention is from The Journal. I’m adding it to The Best Posts & Article

by Larry Ferlazzo / 7h 

“Unite For Literacy” Is An Excellent Site For Beginning Readers

Thanks to a tweet from Barbara Sakamoto, I learned about site called Unite For Literacy. It has over one-hundred simple books in English that the reader can choose to have narrated in English or their choice of many other languages. I’m adding it to The Best Websites To Help Beginning Readers.

by Larry Ferlazzo / 8h 

7-30-14 Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day… | …For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL

Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day… | …For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL: July’s Best Posts From This BlogI regularly highlight my picks for the most useful posts for each month — not including “The Best…” lists. I also use some of them in a more extensive monthly newsletter I send-out. You can see older Best Posts of the Month at Websites Of The Month (more recent lists can be found here). Here

by mike simpson / 7h 

@ THE CHALK FACE

@ THE CHALK FACE:

About the radio show

Join Drs. Shaun Johnson and Tim Slekar 

LIVE Sundays at 6PM EST and Wednesdays at 7PM EST 

on Blog Talk Radio for progressive, pro-public education talk radio. 

Call in to speak live with Tim and Shaun during the show, (805) 727-7111. 

You can also listen to our Monday "Sunday-Replay" at 7PM EST, and re-broadcasts of the archives every Tuesday and Thursday at 7PM EST.

Visit the @ the Chalk Face radio main page for more information on the show and syndication.

What National Group Is Funding the Pro-Common Core Lawsuit in Louisiana?

On July 29, 2014, the Louisiana State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) voted 6 to 4 to become plaintiffs in the pro-Common Core (CCSS) lawsuit whose plaintiffs include nine individuals and the charter management company, Choice Foundation. (Click here for Choice Foundation’s home page. However, the information on their schools has not been updated […]

by deutsch29 / 9:26 PM UTC-7 

Concerns About the Focus on “Grit” in School Improvement

My approach was to focus on my students’ strengths. To do so, it could be said that I needed to “get inside the mind(s)” of my students. To help my students master a legitimate college prep curriculum, I would prefer to say that I needed to listen to my students. In my experience, if teachers […]

by John Thompson / 4min 

Thought experiment on teacher evaluation and high-stakes

This from a Twitter convo a few minutes ago. High-stakes obviously creates a culture of cheating on assessments. Broad evidence for that. Good, bad, or indifferent, teachers learn to play this unfair game to their advantage. Call it cheating, or not. Call it survival. Nevertheless, teachers do reap the rewards of an unfair system, while […]

3 by Shaun Johnson / 44min 

Join us this Sunday at 7PM EST with Nel Noddings

Of all the criticisms of corporate education reforms, one that gets short shrift is the concept of “care.” Emphasis on testing, accountability, high stakes, and competition don’t sound caring. The ethic of care seems to be lacking. We should instead emphasize the “whole child.” There is an abundance of information and skills and dispositions that […]

2 by Shaun Johnson / 2h hide  //  save

@andreperryedu tells us to stop blaming black parents

An important article from the Washington Post. Clearly, there is widespread belief that black parents don’t value education. The default opinion has become “it’s the parents” — not the governance, the curriculum, the instruction, the policy, nor the lack of resources — that create problems in urban schools. That’s wrong. Everyday actions continuously contradict the […]

4 by Shaun Johnson / 3h  

7-30-14 @ The Chalk Face

@ THE CHALK FACE: About the radio showJoin Drs. Shaun Johnson and Tim Slekar LIVE Sundays at 6PM EST and Wednesdays at 7PM EST on Blog Talk Radio for progressive, pro-public education talk radio. Call in to speak live with Tim and Shaun during the show, (805) 727-7111. You can also listen to our Monday "Sunday-Replay" at 7PM EST, and re-broadcasts of the archives every Tuesday and Thursd

by mike simpson / 4h

7-31-14 With A Brooklyn Accent:

With A Brooklyn Accent:

Two Bronx Students Talk About Their Schools and the School To Prison Pipeline

   Yesterday, I met with more than an hour with two Bronx high school students in a great Fordham program called "The History Makers" to answer their questions about the School to Prison Pipeline.  After I answered several questions they posed about drug policies, school discipline, race and class biases in law enforcement,  and Michell Alexander's book "The New Jim Crow" the c

1 by Mark Naison / 4h 

7-29-14 With A Brooklyn Accent: Arne Duncan Drops in Unexpectedly on Meeting With BATS at US Department of Education Office of Civil Rights and Gets an Earful!

With A Brooklyn Accent: Arne Duncan Drops in Unexpectedly on Meeting With BATS at US Department of Education Office of Civil Rights and Gets an Earful!: Arne Duncan Drops in Unexpectedly on Meeting With BATS at US Department of Education Office of Civil Rights and Gets an Earful!   On July 28, 2014, following the  BAT Rally outside the US Department of Education, a delegation of BATS went up to  t

by mike simpson / 3h 

7-31-14 Perdido Street School

Perdido Street School:

Daily News Reports That Andrew Cuomo Has "Lawyered Up"

The Moreland disclosures just don't stop these days - here's another big one, courtesy of Ken Lovett at the Daily News: ALBANY - Gov. Cuomo has lawyered up as the scandal over the handling of his anti-corruption commission has grown, the Daily News has learned. Cuomo hired prominent white collar criminal defense lawyer Elkan Abramowitz in May to represent the governor’s office, sources told The Ne

by reality-based edu... / 3min 

Everyone Hates Andrew

That's the takeaway from Maggie Haberman's Politico story on Andrew Cuomo:As of mid-Thursday afternoon, no Democrats in the state had come forward with statements backing the governor, and party operatives were loath to discuss his case publicly. Many pols in his party have existed in fear of Cuomo since he won a race for state attorney general in 2006, outlived Eliot Spitzer politically and becam

by reality-based edu... / 17min

The Sounds Of Silence In Albany

A comment at the NY Times: Consider the deafening silence from our state legislators over this affair verses the fire storm in New Jersey when Gov. Christie was involved. When the Moreland group was decommissioned, a great sigh of relief was audible through the halls of the Legislative Office Building. Cuomo is being called on his behavior and Democrats have to wake up to the fact that they have a

by reality-based edu... / 3min 

It's Always The Cover-Up

Blake Zeff on Twitter:Reminder: It's always the cover-up http://t.co/P4D1Dn3zKw— Blake Zeff (@blakezeff) July 31, 2014Stephen Gillers in The Nation writes in an article entitled "Andrew Cuomo's Watergate?" that up until now, he didn't see much for US Attorney Preet Bharara to get Cuomo on, but after Cuomo's shenanigans this week stage-managing his defense, he thinks Cuomo gave Preet an o

by reality-based edu... / 14min

An Ominous Warning For Governor Cuomo

Mike Allen on The Morning Joe Show:This is turning into a potentially defining episode for Governor Cuomo, who is of course up for re-election in November and is expected to easily be re-elected. But through all this bad press throughout the ethics commission, this bombshell story last week about how the governor's office had been said to have interfered, the trillion dollar question had been, wha

by reality-based edu... / 14min 

Cuomo Tries To Turn A Corner, Preet Says Not So Fast

Last night around 9:30 PM, Reuters posed the following story:Exclusive: Cuomo intervened in BNP deal to get $1 billion more for NY state fund(Reuters) - Only days before U.S. authorities reached a landmark $8.97 billion settlement with BNP Paribas over the bank’s dealings with countries subject to U.S. sanctions, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo intervened to ensure the state government got a much b

by reality-based edu... / 32min

US Attorney Warns Governor Cuomo Over Witness Tampering, Obstruction Of Justice Charges

The battle between US Attorney Preet Bharara and Governor Andrew Cuomo over the Moreland mess just got ratcheted up some more:In an escalation of the confrontation between the United States attorney in Manhattan, Preet Bharara, and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo over the governor’s cancellation of his own anticorruption commission, Mr. Bharara has threatened to investigate the Cuomo administration for possi

by reality-based edu... / 8h

7-30-14 Perdido Street School

Perdido Street School: Here's Comes The "Health Care Savings" From City WorkersFrom the NY Times:When Mayor Bill de Blasio announced his first labor agreements with New York City unions this spring, he was sharply criticized for granting long-awaited wage increases in exchange for promises of unspecified though sizable savings on health care expenses.Now, some of the specifics are coming

by mike simpson / 8h 

Using A Gates Grant to Sidestep Standardized Testing in University Admissions? | deutsch29

Using A Gates Grant to Sidestep Standardized Testing in University Admissions? | deutsch29:

Using A Gates Grant to Sidestep Standardized Testing in University Admissions?

July 31, 2014

Billionaire Bill Gates believes in testing. However, it appears that he believes in “the market” even more. Consider Gates’ words to legislators in 2009:

When the tests are aligned to the common standards, the curriculum will line up as well—and that will unleash powerful market forces in the service of better teaching. For the first time, there will be a large base of customers eager to buy products that can help every kid learn and every teacher get better. [Emphasis added.]

Bill Gates has no background in K-12 classroom teaching. He has no background in assessment. He does have money, lots of money. It must be his money that allows him to even write a guest editorial in the April 2013 Washington Post to share his views on the *appropriate* role of student test scores in teacher evaluation. He assumes that student standardized test scores will work as a component of teacher evaluation. He also assumes that merit pay can and will work, if only “we” would be careful as “we” “drive the long-term improvement our schools need.”

We?

Bill Gates has no background in teaching. Instead, he views education through the lens of business. And if the tests are interfering with business, perhaps it is time to pull back on the testing in order to save Gates’ extensive CCSS investment. To this end, in June 2014, the Gates Foundation declared the need for a “moratorium”– not the end of testing, mind you, and not the end of CCSS– just a break from theconsequences of testing in order to take the heat off of CCSS:

The Gates Foundation is an ardent supporter of fair teacher feedback and evaluation systems that include measures of student gains. We don’t believe student assessments should ever be the sole measure of teaching 

Using A Gates Grant to Sidestep Standardized Testing in University Admissions? | deutsch29:

Why A Great Principal Burned Out – And What Might Have Helped (Ellie Herman) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Why A Great Principal Burned Out – And What Might Have Helped (Ellie Herman) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Why A Great Principal Burned Out – And What Might Have Helped (Ellie Herman)

Taken from “About” in her blog:

My name is Ellie Herman.  If you want to find out what I’m doing here and why, click here on why I’m writing this blog.  I’ve been working on this project since the beginning of September….

As for my bio, I’m a writer and English teacher.  From 2007 to 2013, I taught Drama, Advanced Drama, Creative Writing, English 11 and 9th grade Composition at a charter high school in South Los Angeles.

Before that, I was a writer/producer for many TV shows, including The Riches, Desperate Housewives, Chicago Hope and Newhart.  My fiction has appeared in many literary journals, including The Massachusetts Review, The Missouri Review and the O.Henry Awards Collection.

I attended public schools in Winnetka, Illinois from kindergarten through high school and graduated from Bryn Mawr College with a degree in English.  I have a teaching credential from Cal State Northridge.  My three children attended Oakwood School, a private school in the San Fernando Valley.  My husband, David Levinson, is a writer who runs the non-profit Big Sunday.  Our basset hound, Lou, appears ineducable, having channeled all of his energy into his good looks.  We live in Los Angeles.

Posted on July 11, 2014

Boxes crowd the hallways, moving in and moving out. I’m in an empty office at Animo Phillis Wheatley Middle School in South L.A. talking to Principal Nat Pickering, who has resigned after three years so that he can go back to being a teacher. Back when I was teaching, I worked with him; he was a history teacher for years before he became Assistant Principal of our school. I will forever be Why A Great Principal Burned Out – And What Might Have Helped (Ellie Herman) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Louisiana Educator: Getting the Truth Out About Ed Reform

Louisiana Educator: Getting the Truth Out About Ed Reform:

Getting the Truth Out About Ed Reform

The education reform we are going through in Louisiana and in many other states is not true reform because it is not improving education in any way whatsoever. That is the truth. VAM is a sham because it is inaccurate, damaging to good teachers' careers, and subject to manipulation by the LDOE. That is the truth. Grading of our schools using A-F is is doing more harm than good because all it does is tell us which schools have the most at risk students (which we knew already) and it stigmatizes all the dedicated professionals who work in our most needful schools driving good educators away. That is the truth. The whole system of constant standardized testing, test prep, and structuring the school year around testing, is destroying all the creativity and joy in teaching and learning and also driving good teachers out of the profession. That is the truth. 

And now we have Common Core. A new system of standards imposed by the Gates Foundation that drives curriculum in our schools and forces teaching shifts to gimmicky methods of teaching math and reading designed by people who have no classroom experience. It forces shifts to methods that are not productive and not as effective as methods most teachers have used for years. Common Core will not improve academic performance, it will certainly not close the achievement gap as claimed by the proponents, but it will drive more dollars to testing companies and to the growing Pearson monopoly of texts, ipads, and test rehearsal products. That is the truth.

Did you notice that most of the traditional (status quo) media reporting has not adequately explained the above truths about the so the called education reform movement which Diane Ravitch and Mercedes Schneider are now referring to as the corporate Louisiana Educator: Getting the Truth Out About Ed Reform:

The Truth About The New Orleans School Reform Model

The Truth About The New Orleans School Reform Model:



The Truth About The New Orleans School Reform Model

Anyone who saw the remarkable HBO series “The Wire” remembers the scene in the fourth season, focused on Baltimore public schools, where the term “juking the stats” defined how corporate-driven re-engineering of the public sphere has distorted institutions so they no longer serve ordinary people.

An anniversary post for The Atlantic described that memorable moment thus:

Historical pressures push teachers in season 4 as President George Bush’s No Child Left Behind education plan casts a real-life shadow. When a new city teacher, formerly of the Baltimore police, hears how his school will teach test questions, the young man immediately recognizes the dilemma: “Juking the stats … Making robberies into larcenies. Making rapes disappear. You juke the stats, and majors become colonels. I’ve been here before.”

Juking the stats is a practice now so ingrained in the way education solutions are posed to the public that examples are rampant.

But anyone who wants to have a genuinely honest discussion about education policy based on the real facts of the matter – and not statistical distortions achieved through gross manipulation and “policy speak” that covers up realities on the ground – needs to constantly question what policy leaders and their scribes in the press are foisting off as “information.” There are better sources to turn to, and the Internet makes that search remarkably easy.

No Way To Talk About NOLA

An especially egregious example of “juking the stats” is the way school administration in New Orleans – where, basically, the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina was used as an opportunity to summarily fire school teachers and turn over the majority of schools to privately managed charter school operators from out of town – is now being marketed to the entire country as a “solution” for public education everywhere.

As I pointed out in a recent piece for Salon, “In the most recent presidential election, both candidates hailed the New Orleans charter-dominated system as a model for other states to follow. It has been touted by think tanks on the center left and the far right as “what should come next” for “transforming” the nation’s schools.”

I went on to explain that although this model of “reform” was being touted by politicians and in the press, “There’s no evidence anywhere that the NOLA model of school reform has ‘improved education.’”

This prompted a letter to my Salon editor from an official of the Recovery School District in New Orleans (RSD NO) – the administrative apparatus put in charge of most of New Orleans schools post-Katrina – that there were “several inaccuracies regarding the Recovery School District and the state of public schools in New Orleans.”

I post the exchange that ensued not just to take readers deep into the weeds of understanding why the NOLA model for running schools should be avoided at all costs, but also to exemplify why and how to contest the “solutions” for education policy constantly being marketed to us by a disingenuous campaign that distorts data to serve its generally hidden ends.

Call…

“Jeffrey [sic] Bryant states “There’s no evidence anywhere that the NOLA model of school reform has ‘improved education’.” The percentage of RSD students performing at grade level on The Truth About The New Orleans School Reform Model:

PCAPS Statement on Budget Impasse | WeArePCAPS

PCAPS Statement on Budget Impasse | WeArePCAPS:

PCAPS Statement on Budget Impasse

PCAPS Statement on Budget Impasse | WeArePCAPS:

Jeff Bryant Interviews New NEA President Who Is Not Afraid to Speak Truth to Power | janresseger

Jeff Bryant Interviews New NEA President Who Is Not Afraid to Speak Truth to Power | janresseger:

Jeff Bryant Interviews New NEA President Who Is Not Afraid to Speak Truth to Power

Posted on July 31, 2014 by janresseger

In its new president, Lily Eskelsen Garcia, the National Education Association (NEA) has a gifted spokesperson for school teachers and for public education.  Eskelsen Garcia knows the issues, connects the dots, and frames a pro-teacher, pro-public education agenda that puts into words the kind of commitment to children and public schools that I have observed over many years to be the priority of the NEA.  In an extensive interview with Jeff Bryant, Eskelsen Garcia discusses her priorities.

When Bryant asks Eskelsen Garcia about the resolution passed at NEA’s recent convention, a resolution to demand Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s removal, she replies: “I will own this; I share in their anger.  The Department of Education has become an evidence-free zone when it comes to high stakes decisions being made on the basis of cut scores on standardized tests.  We can go back and forth about interpretations of the department’s policies, like, for instance, the situation in Florida where teachers are being evaluated on the basis of test scores of students they don’t even teach… But he (Arne Duncan) needs to understand that Florida did that because they were encouraged in their applications for grant money and regulation waivers to do so.  When his department requires that state departments of education have to make sure all their teachers are being judged by students’ standardized test scores, then the state departments just start making stuff up.  And it’s stupid.  It’s absurd.  It’s non-defensible.  And his department didn’t reject applications based on their absurd requirements for testing.  It made the requirement that all teachers be evaluated on the basis of tests a threshold that every application had to cross over.  That’s indefensible…  The testing is corrupting what it means to teach… They still don’t get that when you do a whole lot of things on the periphery, but you’re still judging success by a cut score on a standardized test and judging ‘effective’ teachers on a standardized test, then you will corrupt anything good that you try to accomplish.”

Eskelsen Garcia clearly connects the dots between today’s federal demands and state legislative policies that are undermining public schools.  Bryant asks Eskelsen Garcia about a Jeff Bryant Interviews New NEA President Who Is Not Afraid to Speak Truth to Power | janresseger:

NYC Educator: Campbell's Wonderland

NYC Educator: Campbell's Wonderland:

Campbell's Wonderland

Examine the two compositions carefully.  If you think the resemblance is purely coincidental, read on.  

Campbell Brown is queen of a second lawsuit aimed at cutting down teacher tenure in NY.  With all the experience that comes from teaching English for a single year in Czechoslovakia, she seeks to destroy for all teachers the due-process protections that allow academic freedom over the span of a career.  These same protections also give teachers the ability to better assure students receive their legally mandated services, safe learning environments and a sound education.

If Campbell wins, do you wonder what her post-tenure world might look like?  Look to the pages of Lewis Carroll and his relentless logic.  The imperial finger will point at all of us.  

Too much homework!  Off with their heads!

Too little homework!  Off with their heads!

Too many fail!  Off with their heads!

Too many pass!  Off with their heads!

Putting a hand on a student's shoulder?  Off with their heads!

Cold and uncaring!  Off with their heads!

Students said you said, "...."!  Off with their heads!

Red pen?  Off with their heads!

Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, Black pens!  Off with their heads!

You won't coachNYC Educator: Campbell's Wonderland: