Latest News and Comment from Education

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

8-20-14 Hemlock on the Rocks

Hemlock on the Rocks:





LAUSD computer trouble brings sense of deja vu: Letters
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ACLU challenges school district's iPad policy - Education Week
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Internet Safety Tips | Parent and Educator Edition | Dark Psychology
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INSTEAD OF ADDRESSING WRONGFUL TERMINATIONS, ILEGAL RIFS, SCHOOL CLOSURES AND INTELLECTUAL HOLOCAUST IN LAUSD SCHOOLS, UTLA SENDS Union Officials To Visit Schools In Push For Pay Increase, Smaller Classes Y
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On the frontlines of reintegrating LAUSD | Bill Boyarsky | Jewish Journal
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Let's Not Let This Get Buried: Deported Children Being Killed After Being Sent Back.
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Teachers Union Officials To Visit Schools In Push For Pay Increase, Smaller Classes « CBS Los Angeles
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2014/08/20/teachers-union-to-visit-schools-in-push-for-pay-increase-smaller-classes/ Teachers Union Officials To Visit Schools In Push For Pay Increase, Smaller Classes August 20, 2014 11:59 AM

Dear schools, let the kids have August - LA Times
http://www.latimes.com/style/la-hm-erskine-20140816-column.html
Letter to a Ninth-Year Teacher - Connecting the Dots: Ideas and Practice in Teaching - Education Week Teacher
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/connecting-the-dots/2014/08/letter_to_a_ninth_year_teacher.html?cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS2 Dear Ninth-Year Teacher:  In the last few weeks, you've probably seen more than a few letters to first year teachers, imparting
Counseling, Not Arrests, Is Priority in New Policing Policy for Los Angeles Schools - District Dossier - Education Week
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/District_Dossier/2014/08/los_angeles_unified_overhauls_.html?cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS3 The police force for the nation's second largest school system will now send most students who get into trouble for fighting, bringing


What Happens When Teachers Run Schools? - On California - Education Week
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School as Home, and the Unwritten Job Descriptions of Teachers in High-Needs Schools - View From the Bronx: An Urban Teacher's Perspective - Education Week Teacher
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Fwd: Jersey Jazzman: The Myth of The Burned-Out Senior Teacher: Part I
http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-myth-of-burned-out-senior-teacher.html The Myth of The Burned-Out Senior Teacher: Part I Non-teacher David Boies is absolutely convinced that we are plagued by old, bad, burned-out teachers; that's why we need to get rid of tenure, see, and replace them with young,
Vigilante Teacher
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Ed Notes Online: Why Parent Leaders Should Join Court Intervention in Support of Tenure
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Field Guide to Anti-Teacher Trolls | Peter Greene
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On Due Process, Or What You Call Tenure - The Jose Vilson
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County yet to approve LA Unified’s LCAP, But have yet to discuss their concerns
 The Los Angeles County Office of Education is withholding approval of the Local Control and Accountability Plan drawn up by the Los Angeles Unified School District pending clarification of the $700 million the school district says it is spending on low-income students, English learners and foster children.Los Angeles Unified is receiving additional funds for these three categories of high-needs


In NYC the Scandals have Sex in classrooms , alien lesson plans and threats of violence thanks to Mulgrew
'Sex coverup' with counselor should force UFT President Mulgrew out: foesBy Reuven FentonMay 21, 2012 | 4:00amModal TriggerWOE! Then-guidance counselor Emelina Camacho-Mendez allegedly had sex with UFT chief Michael Mulgrew (above) at Grady HS in 2005.Photo: Daniel ShapiroMichael HicksGrady HSGrady HS (benny j. stumbo)()He needs to be taught a lesson!An outraged UFT chapter leader yesterday
Randi Weingarten defends Mike Mulgrew while innicent teachers are sent to goue factory
MARC A. HERMANN FOR THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWSUFT President Michael MulgrewFormer teachers union president Randi Weingarten went to bat for her successor Sunday after a lawsuit charged that when he was a teacher, he had sex on school premises with a guidance counselor.The suit claims that the United Federation of Teachers made labor concessions to the city to cover up the incident involving Michael
Did Mike Mulgrew have a 'woody' in wood shop?
Why is he still allowed to be around students ? The guy is a total punk. New York teacher's union head 'had sex with teacher in high school wood shop and gave her a cushy job'By DAILY MAIL REPORTERPUBLISHED: 08:29 EST, 20 May 2012 | UPDATED: 08:37 EST, 20 May 2012    10View commentsA lawsuit filed by a disgruntled teacher claims the powerful head of New York City's teachers union was caught
Eli Broad, Bill Gates , Joel Klein and a flying saucer full of Martians designed these things to brainwash us all!!
Michael Mulgrew defends Common Core: 'You sick people need to deal with us and the children that we teach'The wild remarks came during last month's American Federation of Teachers convention in Los Angeles. 'You sick people need to deal with us and the children we teach. Thank you very much!' Mulgrew said.BY BEN CHAPMAN , STEPHEN REX BROWN  NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Published: Thursday, August 7, 2014,
Change Walmart | No to Walmart-Style Classrooms
No to Walmart-Style ClassroomsDear Walmart Owner Rob Walton:I'm standing with teachers to call on your family to immediately stop funding attempts to close our schools and take much needed funding from public education.Sincerely,Why to Act Now:We all know that Walmart has a bad reputation when it comes to the treatment of their workers. What you may not know is that the Walton family, who owns
V.A.M. It!: Finally Mulgrew Says What I Always Suspected!
I wasn't surprised when Michael Mulgrew remarked at the AFT Convention last weekend, "I have heard the stories about how Eli Broad and [Bill] Gates and a flying saucer full of Martians designed these standards."  For you see, I, too had long suspected that the Common-Core was promulgated by Martians.  I just wasn't sure whether it was one misguided martian or a  whole band of them.  You
Astroturfed students file class-action suit against NY teacher tenure laws | SILive.com
By Nick Fugallo | nfugallo@siadvance.com on July 05, 2014 at 12:29 PM
Guess what: school reform is really about land development (not kids) - The Washington Post
BY VALERIE STRAUSS May 28, 2013   Dean Leslie Fenwick (howard.edu (Correction: Fixing publication date for book, and removing quote attributed to book) Here is a provocative piece from Leslie T. Fenwick,dean of the Howard University School of Education and a professor of education policy, about what is really behind urban school reform. It's not about fixing

YESTERDAY

Out of the frying pan; into the fire!? LA Schools Are Actively Recruiting Military Vets For Available Teacher Openings
What the hell is this ? Suddenly enrollment is up and employment at the district is becoming an area of employment growth? Without the Labor board link I would be more dubious   But the teachers student ratio sure has to be an issue after Deasy successfully purged thousands of veteran teachers . We know teachers are expected to teach fir above the the legal  class size caps . There are plenty of
Disastrous Ruling In California Education Trial Makes ‘Reformers’ Giddy — For Now | Liberaland
http://www.alan.com/2014/06/10/disastrous-ruling-in-california-education-trial-makes-reformers-giddy-for-now/ California Superior Court Judge Rolf M. Treu just handed down a devastating ruling that could reverberate nationally and bolster the drive to
NYC 'S ATR ANXIETY IS NOT UNLIKE LA'S DISPLACEMENT DISTRESS: so what about your city?
Fwd: http://www.southbronxschool.coED NOTES: Re teachers houses elsewhere? I know a teacher in Philly was several years ago when the suits shut her school down After promising not to of the school made gains, her name was Hope Moffet and what she did AA pretty brave. ButEven though she was given a reprieve , she fell off the map. Hers was an accidental brand of heroism Anyway, if you're in


8-19-14 Hemlock on the Rocks
Hemlock on the Rocks: New York Students Inch Upward On Common Core Tests, But Most Are Still Failinghttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/14/new-york-common-core-scores-2014_n_5679545.html New York Students Inch Upward On Common Core Tests, But Most Are Still Failing The New York State Education Department released the much-anticipated scoresby Rene Diedrich / 6h Washington State School Officials




8-20-14 Curmudgucation

CURMUDGUCATION:






Making a Difference
How can I make a difference?In millions of situations millions of people have asked that single question.There are plenty of inspirational answers for it. A thousand single persons working together can move the world. Your single action can be the straw that breaks the camel's back, the action that inspires others. Cue violins.Personally, I think it's actually the wrong question.See, we don't have

Lily E. Garcia Will Break My Heart
It is clear that my relationship with the new NEA president will be fraught with ups and downs.I have expressed my willingness to be courted. And she has definitely had her moments.Back on August 11, Valerie Strauss unveiled an interview with LEG that had many folks cheering. Plainspoken and direct, LEG, provided a brace of great quotes:Arne Duncan is a very nice man. I actually believe he is a ve

Patronizing Teachers for the Core
When you read this sentence at the start of a blog post, you know things are about to head south rapidly:One of the most frequent questions I get from coaches is about how to coach teachers in the Common Core (CCSS).This is the lede from "Coaching Towards the Common Core State Standards" over at Ed Week. Our coaching...um...coach is Elena Aguilar. More about her in a second. First, let's
The Five Steps to Killing Universities
In August of 2012, the website The Homeless Adjunct ran the post "How the American University Was Killed, in Five Easy Steps." While "kill" might be a bit of an overstatement, the post definitely gives a picture of how US colleges and universities have been clobbered, and clobbered hard. Let's see if any of these steps look familiar two years later.Here are the HA's five steps.
8-19-14 Curmudgucation
CURMUDGUCATION: Whatever Happened to Affordable College EducationI enjoy the blog Curmudgeon Central not just because the name makes us some sort of internet cousins, but because the writer, a college professor in Texas, makes me look like Little Mary Sunshine.Recently, he published a post that jumps off from this internet meme If you are of a Certain Age (say, mine) then you recognize this is mor


8-20-14 Perdido Street School Week

Perdido Street School:






NY1, Time Warner News Send Debate Invitations To Cuomo And Teachout
From State of Politics:NY1 and Time Warner Cable News in Albany are inviting Gov. Cuomo and his Democratic rival, Zephyr Teachout, to a live, hour-long Sept. 2nd debate that will air statewide and be hosted by NY1 Political Anchor Errol Louis and Capital Tonight Anchor Liz Benjamin. Invitations have also been sent to Rep. Kathy Hochul and Tim Wu to participate in a separate debate for Lieutenant G

Common Core On Life Support
Here's the second poll this week showing the public has turned against the Common Core:While more people know what the Common Core State Standards are than last year, a majority of them oppose the standards, according to the 46th edition of the PDK/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools. Overall, the wide-ranging survey found, 81 percent of those polled said they had heard

Remember When Frank Bruni Thought "Won't Back Down" Was A Great Movie?
Food writer Frank Bruni has written another teacher-bashing column, a habit of his ever since they gave him op-ed real estate at the NY Times, though to be fair, there are quite a few other teacher-bashers on the Times op-ed page as well, so maybe Frank's just trying to fit in with his more famous compatriots in neo-liberalism.In any case, NYC Educator dispensed with Frank's argument here and I do

Cuomo Remains Hidden In The Shadows
A few of us on Twitter were wondering if anybody has seen Andrew Cuomo since he returned from his Israel trip.It seems like every morning, this is schedule (as it is for today):Gov. Andrew Cuomo is in New York City with no public schedule.And why not stay hidden and work things from the shadows?It certainly isn't hurting his poll numbers, as the latest Quinnipiac Poll shows this morning:Cuomo cont

8-19-14 Perdido Street School Week
Perdido Street School: Support For Common Core Continues To Drop - Even In Reform-Friendly PollsWho will UFT President Michael Mulgrew punch over this very disheartening news for Common Core supporters?Anybody watching the escalating battle across the country over the Common Core State Standards and aligned standardized testing will hardly be surprised by a new national poll which reveals a signif

CASU Week of Action | CALIFORNIA STUDENT UNION

CASU Week of Action |:





CASU Week of Action



CASU Fall Action Flyer 01CASU WEEK OF ACTION
OCTOBER 13-17, 2014

Join students from across the state this Fall 2014 for a Week of Action focused on educating, organizing, and mobilizing our strength in the struggle to protect our education and our future!

WHAT WE DEMAND
  • NO TO PRIVATIZATION! We demand education be treated as a right, not a commodity! Roll back fees, divest from inhumane corporations, and hold administrators accountable.
  • YES TO DEMOCRACY! We demand democratic governance by students, staff, and faculty! Remove UC President Napolitano and CCSF Special Trustee Agrella.
  • NO TO REPRESSION! We demand an end to the intimidation and culture of violence against students! Campuses should be hate free, rape free, and free speech zones.
  • YES TO DIVERSITY! We demand that the academy represent and serve the community! Open undocumented resource centers and make Ethnic Studies a General Education requirement.
THE ACTION PLAN
  • SEPTEMBER – Regional Meetings convened and organized by regional committee groups who will set and finalize the dates.
  • SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER – Outreach Tour of students tabling, flyering, and conducting workshops at each other’s campuses. Exact dates to be scheduled by those in attendance at the September Regional Meetings.
  • OCTOBER 13-17 – Week of Action across the state. Each campus group will determine the exact day/s and action/s that work best for them.
If you or your school organization would like to get involved, please send an email tocastudentunion@gmail.com
ZINE SUBMISSIONS
During the Week of Action, we’ll be distributing a Zine that is open for any Cali student to contribute to! The submission guidelines are as follows:
  • Should focus on one or more of the demands stated above (more info about each below)
  • All forms of artistic expression will be accepted—drawing, photograph, poem, short story, etc.—as long as these can be formatted to fit on a 8.5” x 5.5” sheet
  • PDF, JPG, DOC files should be emailed to casuzine@gmail.com
  • Hard copy submissions will be collected during the Outreach Tour on campuses

STUDENTS’ DEMANDS ACROSS THE STATE

NO TO PRIVATIZATION!
Since Wall Street crashed the economy in 2008, tuition fees at all California public universities have increased over 300%, forcing students to either drop out or mortgage their education with exorbitant loans. Nationally, the class of 2014 had an average debt burden of $33,000, making it the most indebted in history. Even with the four-year fee moratorium that students protested for and won in 2012, administrators are still finding ways to further their privatization agendas, whether it’s by negotiating unfair union contracts and manipulating commercial CASU Week of Action |:

NYC Educator: All's Fair in Love and Teacher-Bashing

NYC Educator: All's Fair in Love and Teacher-Bashing:



All's Fair in Love and Teacher-Bashing


I'm a teacher, so I write about education. But if I were a NY Times columnist, I could write about hedge funds. I probably wouldn't write very well about them because I'm not really clear on what they are. But, like NY Times columnists, hedge fund guys are education experts no matter what, and turnabout is fair play, so there you go.

Frank Bruni used to be a food writer. I'm sure if you want to know where you can get a souffle, he's your guy. Now he's writing about tenure. Here's how he begins:

Mike Johnston’s mother was a public-school teacher. So were her mother and father. And his godfather taught in both public and private schools.

Notice the use of her, the incorrect possessive pronoun? I teach ESL to beginners. When my kids do that, I'll draw attention to it by drawing stick figures on the board of a boy and a girl. Of course my kids aren't supposed to know English yet. Aside from that, what Mr. Bruni has here is an appeal to authority, a logical fallacy designed to make us accept an argument whether or not it has merit. And there's more of that here.

Arne Duncan, the education secretary, praised the decision. Tenure even drew scrutiny from Whoopi Goldberg on the TV talk show “The View.” She repeatedly questioned the way it sometimes shielded bad teachers.

Well, if they think so, then it must be true, right? After all, they're famous, so they must know. Is that a good argument, or another appeal to authority? Or is it the bandwagon fallacy--Everyone's doing it, so it must me right. Let's take a look at the background of Colorado State Senator Johnston, on whose say-so Bruni appears to have determined tenure is no good:

Johnston spent two years with Teach for America in Mississippi in the late 1990s. Then, after getting a master’s in education from Harvard, he worked for six years as a principal in public schools in the Denver area, including one whose success drew so much attention NYC Educator: All's Fair in Love and Teacher-Bashing:

Poll: Parents Want an End to the Testing Obsession | NEA Today

Poll: Parents Want an End to the Testing Obsession | NEA Today:



Poll: Parents Want an End to the Testing Obsession

August 20, 2014 by twalker  
Filed under Featured NewsTop Stories


By Richard Naithram
Educators are pushing back against high stakes testing across the nation, and, according to a new poll, parents are on their side. The 2014 PDK/Gallup Annual Survey on the Public’s Attitude Toward Public Schools, released on Wednesday, finds that an overwhelming majority of parents (68 percent) do not believe that standardized tests help teachers know what to teach.
Furthermore, more parents oppose using student standardized test scores to evaluate teachers. Opposition to this policy has grown from 47 percent in 2012 to 61 percent this year.
The survey’s message is clear, says NEA President-Elect Lily E. García: Enough is enough.
“Students and teachers continue to lose more and more class time to testing and test preparation, and that time should be spent teaching and learning a rich, engaging curriculum,” explained García. “The serious consequences of these toxic tests will only snowball unless parents, educators and community members push back against lawmakers determined to tie high-stakes decisions to fill-in-the-bubble tests.”
The PDK/Gallup survey also found that the Common Core State Standards have gained greater visibility over the past year, with over 80 percent of respondents having heard about the standards and 47 percent saying they have heard a “great deal or a fair amount.” (In 2012, just one-third had heard of them.) About 60 percent of Americans currently oppose the standards.
According to the poll, however, about half of Americans first heard about the Common Core from television, newspapers, and radio. On the other hand, only 17 percent learned about the standards from teachers or other education professionals. Consequently, misinformation and confusion has permeated the dialogue.
Combined with the poor implementation on the ground in many districts, says García, it’s not surprising that the public hasn’t rallied behind the standards.
“They are victims of targeted misinformation campaigns. Some on the far right have turned high standards for all students into a political football,” said García. “Our students’ futures aren’t a game. These standards Poll: Parents Want an End to the Testing Obsession | NEA Today:


Teacher Raises Money to Feed Ferguson Kids Who Can’t Get Meals at Shuttered Schools
A teacher in North Carolina has raised nearly $80,000 to feed students from low-income families in Ferguson, Mo., who would ordinarily be getting free lunches at public schools in the St. Louis suburb but can’t because the start of the 2014-15 school year has been delayed twice as a result of civil unrest. Source: The Answer Sheet/The Washington Post
Los Angeles Schools Make Discipline Less Harsh
Students caught misbehaving in the nation’s second largest school district will be sent to the principal’s office rather than the courthouse as part of sweeping disciplinary reforms announced Tuesday by Los Angeles schools. The decriminalization of student discipline marks the latest rollback to “zero tolerance” policies that were instituted in the 1970s and 1980s and intensified in the wake of th

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Battles are usually won or lost before they begin

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Battles are usually won or lost before they begin:





Battles are usually won or lost before they begin

“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win”

― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
For Karen Lewis, it's not just about a single election campaign but about laying the foundation for a movement. Ah music to my ears. Before she formally announces her candidacy, she wants to make sure she has enough troops in place behind her and a core group of progressives to run in city council races.



I've got a good one for her out in the 35th Ward -- solid, young, progressive Carlos Sosa who has the backing of State Sen. Willie Delgado and State Rep. (elect)Will Guzzardi, two guys who know how to beat the machine.



Forgive the war metaphor, but Karen should expect nothing less from Rahm Emanuel and his gang. On thing we've learned from many campaigns is that battles are usually won or lost before they begin, sometimes without firing a single shot (metaphorically speaking, that Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Battles are usually won or lost before they begin:

Private school enrollments highest in unlikely spots :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet

Private school enrollments highest in unlikely spots :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:



Private school enrollments highest in unlikely spots

Private school enrollments highest in unlikely spots



(Calif.) Think of the American private school and you might imagine a picturesque campus somewhere on the Eastern seaboard where the boys are all in tweed and the girls wear matching berets.
But, according to new research, the number one metro in the U.S. with the highest percentage of private school enrollment is a lot further south – New Orleans, which reports a full quarter of all its K-12 students attend private institutions.
Honolulu is next at 20.7 percent followed by San Francisco and Baton Rouge at 19 percent. The stereotypical eastern metro doesn’t make the list until number five – Philadelphia, where 18.4 percent of the K-12 students attend private school.
New York? Boston? Baltimore? None made the top 10 as compiled by economist Jed Kolko in a blog posted this week by the San Francisco-based real estate research website, Trulia.
To be clear, when the numbers get sorted by neighborhood, a more traditional pattern emerges – the Upper East Side of Manhattan, for instance, is close to 90 percent private school enrollment; same for the Northwest, Washington D.C., the Greenville section of Wilmington, Del. and the Lakewood neighborhood of New Brunswick, N.J.
“Kids are more likely to attend private school if their family is rich, highly educated, non-Hispanic White, Catholic or orthodox Jew,” Kolko said in his post. “That makes private school attendance much more common in some places than others.”
The analysis was based primarily on Census data but Trulia also contributed with an online, consumer survey conducted in June where 2,029 adults were asked about the most important considerations when choosing a home.
The point of Kolko’s blog was to give prospective real estate buyers some perspective when it came to picking neighborhoods and schools, including private school options.
He emphasized two important findings from the research:



Demise of the school bond means big spike in housing fees
(Calif.) Gov. Jerry Brown's opposition to placing a school facilities bond on the November ballot led a key law maker Tuesday to give up on widely-supported legislation that would've done so. The fallout is likely to be a large increase in the amount of money schools can collect from housing builders to pay for school construction to house new students.