Latest News and Comment from Education

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Democrats Can Win With A Public Education Agenda – By Fighting To Fund It - Education Opportunity Network

Education Opportunity Network:



Education Opportunity Network -










Democrats Can Win With A Public Education Agenda – By Fighting To Fund It



Is it possible that education is the issue that will determine whether results of the upcoming election swing the United States Senate to Republican Party control? Will there be a dramatic change in party control of state governors’ offices because of how candidates stand on supporting pubic schools? As the November contests approach, these are […]




Recognizing Real Leadership For Education Progress: Mayor Bill de Blasio



What’s wrong with this picture? During the nation’s Back-to-School Season, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has been touring states in a bus to “highlight the champions of reform.” At one stop, where he spoke to an audience of parents at a Nashville, Tennessee middle school, he challenged the National PTA, according to reporters for […]




The Education Conversation ‘Reformers’ Want Versus The One They Get



What will $12 million get you? How about a “conversation about education?” That’s what a new organization Education Post aims to get for its “initial grants,” courtesy of, according to education reporter Lindsay Layton of The Washington Post, ” the Broad Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Walton Family Foundation, and an anonymous donor.” In a debut […]




Charter Schools Don’t Need An Ad Campaign, They Need Regulation



This time of year, while classroom teachers and administrators in public schools are busy welcoming students back to a new school year and figuring out how they’re going to cope with devastating financial constraints, advocates in the charter schools industry are propping up their image with an extensive new public relations campaign, called “Truth About […]




Back To Schools White People Cannot See



As the season for new school openings rolls out, there are reasons for a new consciousness-raising about those schools – the kind of consciousness-raising that can be brought about when there’s a shock to the system like Ferguson, Missouri. Of the many heartfelt, well thought-out, and clearly written responses to the ongoing travesty happening in Ferguson, […]




‘Better Than Republicans,’ Not Good Enough For Education



A common admonition progressives have gotten used to hearing over the years is to support more conservative Democratic candidates because “Republicans are worse.” This admonition makes some sense in electoral politics, when, in most cases, progressives face a ballot box decision where they have to choose the “lesser evil” instead of someone who wants to […]




Education ‘Reform’ Loses The Netroots



Every year Netroots Nation is arguably the most important annual event in the progressive community and a telling barometer of what is on the minds of, as Howard Dean put it, “the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.” Last week’s meeting was no exception. Mainstream coverage of that event has been focused exclusively on the […]

Education Opportunity Network:

Why Teachers' Unions & Due Process Matter - Bridging Differences - Education Week

Why Teachers' Unions & Due Process Matter - Bridging Differences - Education Week:



Why Teachers' Unions & Due Process Matter

Today, Leo Casey of the Albert Shanker Institute joins Deborah Meier on the Bridging Differences blog.
Deb:
So we begin our conversation with the idea of democracy. It is the pivotal idea in the political heritage we share, as a strong conception of democracy has been at the root of the work both of us have done in schools, in unions, and in civic life. We both came to that work with a conviction that we were part of a democratic left, as our vision of a better world had democracy as its non-negotiable center. On the subject of democracy, we will have to do some work to find any significant differences that need bridging.
American democracy is, as you say, in trouble. Economic inequality has reached heights unseen since the late 1800s. Unaccountable money in our politics, turned into a deluge by Citizens United, is making a mockery of the bedrock democratic principle of one person, one vote. The right of all Americans to political voice and self-government, hard won by epic struggles and great sacrifices, is being whittled away by voter suppression laws. Courts create new rights for corporations out of whole cloth, while they make it harder and harder for working people to exercise their rights.
Why does America find itself in the middle of a new Gilded Age, with its democracy embattled? In large measure, I would argue, because a beleaguered American labor movement has been in retreat for three decades, losing battle after battle. It wasn't always this way. For most of the 20thcentury, the political power of American unions was decisive in campaigns for social and economic reform, such as the New Deal and the Great Society, and in the struggles for freedom and human rights, such as the civil rights movement. But, by the end of the century, the once great industrial unions that had led and won those battles were shadows of their former selves. There remained only a handful of American public-sector unions that possessed the organizational capacity and the political strength to challenge growing corporate power in elections, in legislatures, and in the streets. Central to this group were teachers' unions, the one part of the American labor movement in which the majority of its sector was still organized.
As the strength of the American labor movement waned, emboldened corporate power increasingly set its sights on the remaining centers of union strength, teachers' unions and other public-sector Why Teachers' Unions & Due Process Matter - Bridging Differences - Education Week:

Michigan ACLU Exposes Educational Catastrophe in Gov. Rick Snyder’s Takeover of Detroit’s Schools | janresseger

Michigan ACLU Exposes Educational Catastrophe in Gov. Rick Snyder’s Takeover of Detroit’s Schools | janresseger:



Michigan ACLU Exposes Educational Catastrophe in Gov. Rick Snyder’s Takeover of Detroit’s Schools

Metro Detroit Times has just published an extraordinary expose of the software-based curriculum that was imposed in 2012 in 12 Detroit, Michigan schools.  These were the bulk of schools in Michigan Governor Rick Snyder’s new Education Achievement Authority (EAA), a state agency created to take over Michigan’s schools with the lowest test scores.  “In all, about 10,000 students—largely poor, predominantly African American, often lagging years behind in terms of academics—would be the test subjects.”
According to the report’s author, Curt Guyette, an investigative reporter with the Michigan American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Snyder’s state school takeover was intended to originate with a number of low-scoring schools in Detroit and then take over so-called failing schools across the state; however, the legislation to expand the Education Achievement Authority beyond Detroit never passed in the legislature.  Snyder is known to have modeled his idea on the Louisiana Recovery School District, that took over public schools in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina,
Guyette describes how the EAA was created in Michigan, “The system itself would be unique, with all strings leading back to the governor. The legal loophole through which the EAA slipped into being is a little-used state law that allows two units of government, acting in cooperation, to create a third public entity.  In this case, it was Detroit Public Schools (DPS)—under the control of a Snyder-appointed emergency manager—and the Eastern Michigan University Board of Regents, the majority of whom are gubernatorial appointees, that entered into what’s called an inter-local agreement that created the EAA.  It is overseen by an 11-person board, with the governor appointing seven members and EMU and the DPS’s emergency manager each selecting two more.”
In 2012, EAA hired John Covington as chancellor.  Covington had recently left Kansas City Public Schools (just two weeks before that school district lost its accreditation).  Covington brought along a team from Kansas City, headed up by Mary Esselman, who became the EAA’s deputy chancellor and who led the launch of a massive, software-based curriculum called Buzz—developed by one Utah company, Agilix Labs, and supplemented with additional educational software from another Utah company, the School Improvement Network.
All this was supposed to “personalize” and “individualize” learning for the students in Detroit’s experiment.  “But in reality, what internal EAA documents reveal is the extent to which teachers and students were, over the course of two school years, used as whetstones to hone a badly flawed product being pitched as cutting-edge technology.”  Mary Esselman is Michigan ACLU Exposes Educational Catastrophe in Gov. Rick Snyder’s Takeover of Detroit’s Schools | janresseger:

BREAKING NEWS!!! Para Harassed at MS 61 in Brooklyn! southbronxschool

http://www.southbronxschool.com:



BREAKING NEWS!!! Para Harassed at MS 61 in Brooklyn!

It seems that MS 61 in Brooklyn is turning into quite the soap opera. A dangerous soap opera.



For those who don't know or need remindingMS 61has been in the news lately due to the diligence of retired teacher Jeff Storobinsky and his Facebook group, Money Over Age.



First some background.



A former colleague at MS 61 who in the last six months had suffered a stroke and currently was undergoing chemo treatments, had passed away suddenly and in his grief he posted this on his the MOA page. 



We all handle death in different ways. Some mourn privately, some want to mourn with others. Jeff clearly was in mourning. What came next was not part of the mourning process.



Jeff's fiance still is employed at 61 as a para. She has taken a lot of heat for being Jeff's fiance and being close and that is probably par for the course. We here at SBSB have no problem, as we are sure his fiance doesn't, that if yo

u don't want to be her friend, don't want to socialize with her that is fine. Let her do her job, let her work in a safe environment, and just be courteous to her.



This morning, September 24, 2014 Jeff's fiance Marisol found the following attached to her time card;



Take your time reading it and take even more time to put your eyeballs back in their sockets. Yes, even The Crack Team blushed.



Marisol is beside herself. She immediately left the building and headed home to the safe embrace of Jeff where she still remains.



Jeff, a Jew, in all probability will forgo celebrating the 2nd holiest day of the Jewish calendar in order to accompany Marisol tomorrow as they meet with NYPD detectives. Already this deviant has kept Jeff from partaking in the celebrations which will mark the beginning of 5775. Perhaps while at the local NYPD precinct Jeff might be able to seek solace in hearing the distant sounds of the Shofar from Williamsburg.



But where will the solace and safety come from for Marisol? How long will she have to be looking over http://www.southbronxschool.com:

UPDATE: NEA president: End factory school reform | MSNBC

NEA president: End factory school reform | MSNBC:



NEA president: End factory school reform
The National Education Association’s Lily Eskelsen Garcia joins Morning Joe to discuss why she’s fighting standardized testing and why Education Secretary Arne Duncan should resign.






On Morning Joe from MSNBC: Finland, Testing and Drinking the Kool-Aid
Check out Lily on Morning Joe from MSNBC. From high stakes testing, to Finland, to measuring what matters, it was all on the table. [View the story "Lily Eskelsen García on Morning Joe" on Storify]

Retention Wars: Blaming Children | Live Long and Prosper

Retention Wars: Blaming Children | Live Long and Prosper:



Retention Wars: Blaming Children

THIRD GRADE PUNISHMENT LAWS
In the recent film, Rise Above the Mark, Linda Darling Hammond said,
The problem we have with testing in this country today is that…we’re using the wrong kinds of tests, and…we’re using the tests in the wrong kinds of ways.
More than a dozen states, including Indiana punish third grade children — 8 and 9 year olds — for low reading achievement by forcing them to repeat third grade.Retention in grade doesn’t work…and we have known it for decades.
In the past, parents, teachers, and administrators used to make the decision to retain a student in his current grade. Now it’s state legislatures, governors, and departments of education. We have allowed the wrong people — politicians and policy makers — to determine the academic placement of our children using the wrong kinds of tests in the wrong kinds of ways.
21ST CENTURY DUNCE CAP
Recent research in retention in grade mirrors past research from the last century. We do know that intense intervention helps…but, as a nation, we’re not willing to spend the money to provide it for our children. We know that lowered poverty rates help, but, as a nation, we’re not willing to face the fact that we have failed to reduce poverty in our country, and in fact, it continues to grow.
Yet state after state continues to force school systems to hold children back in third grade causing unnecessary academic and emotional damage by labeling students as failures. This is no more effective in helping children learn than was the 19th century dunce cap.
Oklahoma partially repealed their third grade punishment law last May. They are still doing the wrong thing, requiring children to be punished for low reading achievement, but at least now, they are letting parents and local educators have some input into the decision.
Of course some legislators, who claim to be for “local control” during campaign season, were not happy to yield to actual local control…
[The] bill shifts promotion-retention decisions about third-graders who score unsatisfactory on the Oklahoma Core Curriculum Test to teachers and parents.
The existing law required students not covered by certain exemptions to be retained.
…Sen. Gary Stanislawski, R-Tulsa said “…the decision that a child needs to be held back won’t come down to a single high-stakes test. It allows for a series of assessments throughout the school year and gives our local schools, professional educators and parents greater input.”
Notice that in Oklahoma the argument wasn’t against retention, but was for local control. The change to the law requires local folks, parents and teachers, to decide whether or not to retain a child instead of the no-excuses policy of retaining everyone who can’t read by third grade.
TEACHERS NEED TO LEARN THE RESEARCH
One problem with retention in grade is that it is supported by a large number of educators.
Many teachers don’t believe the research and instead rely on “anecdotal evidence.” An elementary teacher in a K-5 school building, for example, might retain a child and assume that all is well because the child does better the second year…and perhaps the following year as well. Unfortunately, the gains are Retention Wars: Blaming Children | Live Long and Prosper:

tomhayden.com - TOM HAYDEN FROM THE PEOPLE'S CLIMATE MARCH

tomhayden.com - The Democracy Journal:







LAST HOURS, NARRATED BY LEONARDO DICAPRIO




This is the second episode of the Green World Rising series narrated by actor Leonardo DiCaprio



Congress Wavers on War

Congress gave President Obama a half-hearted half-measure of support for arming the Syrian rebels last week, just before Obama took the next step up the ladder of escalation by bombing Syria without United Nations authorization. The congressional war authorization was designed to put off further debate until after the mid-term elections, when Congress will return to the issues. There were 108 Hous
Marching for a Green Economy "Built to Last"

Jane Goodall, former Vice President Al Gore, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon march in Sunday's climate march in New York City. (Photo: Getty, 2014)NEW YORK CITY- Sept 22. With hundreds of thousands of marchers converging on the United Nations climate summit, New York Mayor, Bill de Blasio took the opportunity to declare a massive initiative to reduce greenho
Tom Hayden from the People's Climate March

Tom Hayden speaking at the People's Climate March on September 21, 2014. (Photo: Barbara Williams, 2014)"Students and young people are to be congratulated - thank you - for your mobilizing against extreme climate change these past few years. You have pushed your campuses towards carbon-free sustainability and now toward divestment from fossil fuels. You have surrounded the White House and pus
Vietnam Peace Commemoration Committee Petition

Dear Gen. Kicklighter, We write on behalf of many veterans of the American peace movement during the Vietnam era with a deep concern that taxpayer funds and government resources are being expended on a one-sided, three-year, $30 million educational program on the "lessons of Vietnam" to be implemented in our nation's schools, universities and public settings. 
Lessons Never Learned—From Vietnam to Iraq

I am joining many peace groups around America in expressing opposition to the escalation of the Iraq War into a quagmire that is likely to be costly in lives, tax dollars and our tarnished reputation.  Ann Arbor is the place, along with Berkeley, where the young American peace movement demanded a teach-in, an end to campus business as usual, an end to intellectual conformity and congressional hear
Democracy Project Petition: Letter to Dr. Jefferey Sachs

September 3, 2014 Dr. Jeffrey Sachs UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network 314 Low Library, 535 W. 116 New York City 10027   Petition: More nuclear power is not the answer to the climate crisis Thank you for the impressive scope of your preparatory research and recommendations for the 2015 UN climate talks. However, we wish to submit our strong dissent from your assertion that the public mus

NYC Educator: Neanderthals Dominate School Policy in 5775

NYC Educator: Neanderthals Dominate School Policy in 5775:



Neanderthals Dominate School Policy in 5775

First of all, Happy New Year to all blog readers (and don't forget to write 5775 on your checks starting today).  Let's get right to the deplorable state of affairs in our schools. After 12 years of unending reforminess, we finally have a mayor who shows signs of not being insane. And yet, we still have the cell phone ban that has had us shaking our heads since its inception.

In my school we don't scan all who enter, and a lot of us are grateful for that. My feeling is the less schools resemble prisons, the better we'll do. Of course we haven't been able to stop the imposition of Common Core, or its untested and baseless mandates, but it's one nation under Gates after all. But I've got a teenager at home, and I know well that teenagers without cell phones in 5775 are not happy. I believe in the happiness of teenagers, so I don't go out of my way to enforce crazy rules.

If kids don't bother me with their phones, I don't bother them. I generally ask them to keep the phones out of sight. Sometimes kids use them as translators, and sometimes I look the other way when they do that. More often they keep them cleverly hidden under the desks and assume I won't notice. I'm sure that sometimes I don't, but when I do I make them put them away. I hate seeing kids texting in class, but I guess it's the equivalent of passing notes, something I did in school back when dinosaurs roamed the earth.

It takes a lot for me to actually confiscate a phone. One time, a boy's phone rang, and he answered it in a foreign language. That was brazen. He not only used his phone in my classroom, but concurrently managed to violate my cardinal rule that we speak English in English class. That boy's NYC Educator: Neanderthals Dominate School Policy in 5775:

Newark School Board Votes to Block Superintendent Anderson’s Pay - NJ Spotlight

Newark School Board Votes to Block Superintendent Anderson’s Pay - NJ Spotlight:



NEWARK SCHOOL BOARD VOTES TO BLOCK SUPERINTENDENT ANDERSON’S PAY

Members flex their newfound fiscal muscle, but embattled state-appointed school chief still holds the purse strings


cami anderson
Newark schools Superintendent Cami Anderson
The tug-of-war over control of Newark public schools got another jolt this week, when the newly empowered local advisory board moved to block pay to embattled state-appointed superintendent Cami Anderson.
The elected board took the action at its Tuesday meeting, employing the long-fought-for powers it regained this summer over business and fiscal management of the district. The new powers were considered a big step in returning local control to a district the state took over in 1994.
But the situation is not as simple as it sounds, which is par for the course in the troubled school district.
While the board technically was vested those powers in June as part of a court ruling, as well as improved conditions in the district, it seems the state -- and Anderson -- still hold the ultimate authority.
Under the transition plan for the district finished in August and signed by board president Rashon Hasan, Anderson explicitly holds the ultimate veto powers in case of any disagreement with the board.
“Should the State District Superintendent and Newark Advisory Board reach impasse on any action items relating to Fiscal management or operations, the State District Superintendent retains her ability to veto actions,” reads the agreement.
Efforts to contact Anderson or her spokesperson as to her intentions yesterday were unsuccessful.
In an interview, acting state education commissioner David Hespe said there was, indeed, a protocol to follow. Hespe, who in one of his early acts as commissioner moved to return fiscal control to Newark, said yesterday the board would first have to release its formal minutes of the meeting.
“Once the minutes are done, we’ll take a look at it,” Hespe said yesterday. “It’s a Newark School Board Votes to Block Superintendent Anderson’s Pay - NJ Spotlight:

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: More name dropping

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: More name dropping:



More name dropping

Jitu Brown and 10 other protesters say their arrest at City Hall Tuesday night forced the mayor to provide services for Dyett High School students. (DNAinfo)
"I f**ked up." -- Rahm Emanuel
Rahm's dream of two-tiered public school system -- one tier for gentrifying neighborhoods and one for the rest of us --- is turning into a political nightmare.



The mayor has once again gotten himself into deep doo-doo with Obama's people over the naming of another proposed expensive, new selective-enrollment high school for Lincoln Park. As I pointed out last week, Rahm thought that naming the school after the president would help mend his election campaign fences, both with Obama's people who dislike him and with black voters still irate over his notorious mass school closings.



But the response from White House staffers was quick and to the point. Valerie Jarrett reportedly told Rahm in no uncertain terms -- don't drag Obama's name into your messHe's got enough problems of his own. And just like that, Rahm walked it back.



Yesterday, you could almost feel for the Little Emperor as he had to stand before the media, like a spanked child, and do his forced self-criticism. I'm only human, feinted the mayor, claiming that he had “made a mistake” in his “rush to honor” President Barack Obama — which is why he's now dropping plans to name the new, $60 million selective-enrollment high school on the Near North Side after his former boss.



A "mistake"? What mistake? Rahm never says.  Honoring his boss? With TIF Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: More name dropping:

for the love of learning: Teaching would be easier if it wasn't for the students

for the love of learning: Teaching would be easier if it wasn't for the students:



Teaching would be easier if it wasn't for the students



Here's what happened the other day.



My grade 8 students were exiting our classroom from social studies, as my grade 6 students began to enter.



I was getting myself focused on teaching a lesson on sentence writing, with an emphasis on using commas. I was thinking about how I could teach my students to write with a variety of sentence lengths so that their writing might flow for the reader.



I was trying to figure out how I was going to teach them how to use independent and dependent clauses to make short, medium and long sentences without boring them to death by talking about independent and dependent clauses.



I was proud that I had completely abstained from using the school's photocopier until the third week of school for a one-page handout on sentence writing.



But before half the class could even arrive, Kevin and Thomas were engaged in yet another one of their daily disagreements. Despite the obvious that they want to be friends, and that they need each other to get through the day, Kevin and Thomas's lagging social skills continue to set each other at odds.



Kevin was pissed right off and wouldn't even come in the classroom. He was going home.



Thomas came in but he was both denying and avoiding Kevin's accusations over a missing Rubik's Cube.



I immediately caught myself being completely annoyed by this spat.



I don't have time for this!



I had a lesson on sentences to teach! I didn't have time to worry about some stupid Rubik's Cube that may or may not have been stolen!



Sometimes it's tempting to think about how much easier teaching would be if it wasn't for the students -- Sometimes it's challenging to remember that there is no teaching without for the love of learning: Teaching would be easier if it wasn't for the students:

Private giving and the insolvency of chaos – redqueeninla

Private giving and the insolvency of chaos – redqueeninla:



Private giving and the insolvency of chaos




 Last week Google announced it was funding all DonorsChoose requests posted for LAUSD classrooms.

That’s good news, right? Well…. it’s complicated. Obviously, more money for our kids is good.
But why must it come via a third party? Every time a middle man is interjected, money for the thing itself is siphoned into third party hands. It is not an efficient way to fund the needs because it is not direct. There is overhead and a huge bureaucracy associated with DonorsChoice. When you give money to your child’s teacher through this medium, some fraction of your money never makes it to her. This is not efficient.
I would prefer my education-donation dollars be maximized for education, and not diverted elsewhere.
This route is not egalitarian either. When you give money to your child’s teacher, you are not giving money to your neighbor’s child’s teacher, even though both may teach in the same, public school system.
This means your “choice” is essentially a method to bypass the administration of a school. Because who is to say the funding propriety that you choose is optimal for the school itself? Who is to say that your child’s teacher’s needs is greater than another’s need within the school as a whole? This giving of “choice” to the donor, is bypassing the choice that we make as a democracy for a democratic education system to be administered centrally. Centralized administration is most efficient but mostly, it is the correct, fair way to administer a large, complicated system. It requires a ‘big-picture’ view of the whole to understand where funds are most needed for the greatest good.
So instead, giving “choice” to the donor undermines the integrity of a system. By saying that the donor’s “choice” is more important than anyone else’s, this is saying that the community does not matter as a community. The choice to empower a system at the community level has, effectively, been removed by this systematized method of privatizing donation priorities.
And what of the donor? Was it not magnanimous of Google to give one million dollars in one fell swoop? Again, of course. But…. if they have such a Private giving and the insolvency of chaos – redqueeninla:

11 Reasons why Seattle’s Preschool for all Proposition 1B is a bad idea | Seattle Education

11 Reasons why Seattle’s Preschool for all Proposition 1B is a bad idea | Seattle Education:



11 Reasons why Seattle’s Preschool for all Proposition 1B is a bad idea


stop sign 2
In the last few days I was alerted to some information that I find the most egregious about Seattle Councilmember Tim Burgess’ Preschool for All plan that is now Proposition 1B and I am therefore placing it as #1 on the list, revising the list from 10 Reasons Why to 11 Reasons Why Proposition 1B is truly a bad idea. This first one is long but stay with me.
1. I was assured by those supporting Prop 1B that only one test would be given to preschoolers at the end of the year to ensure that they were “kindergarten ready”. Wrong. (Actually this is wrong on many levels. Didyou need to be tested to find out if you were “kindergarten ready”?)
Since then, I found out some very disturbing information. Funds so far have been used to punish schools by taking away money from programs when test scores do not meet standards established by the Families and Education Levy committee and staff.
If you look at page 39 of the 2012-2013 Annual Report provided by Seattle’s Families and Education Levy, you will see under Innovation Schools: Beacon Hill Internationalthat there was a target in terms of percentage of students who should reach a specified goal. (This goal was established by city Office for Education staff.)
The student population tested did not reach that goal. Under the heading of % of Contract Target Achieved, you see 79.9%. Full performance pay is achieved only when 90% of a given performance target is achieved, something that is not shown in this chart. What that means is that there is a proportion of money taken away from the school or program when less than 90% of a target is achieved. So, if you look at the various schools and program you see that many of the schools did not meet a specified goal determined by those who have no understanding of what is happening in the classroom and using MAP test scores. That means money lost to these schools and students – in fact levy-funded schools and programs collectively lost $322,563 in performance pay in 2012-2013 as a result of failing to achieve academic targets, including test scores (pg 37) . This is just like the No Child Left Behind program that we wanted to get away from but more insidious.
According to the same report, on page 38, the pre-K students are to be assessed twice 11 Reasons why Seattle’s Preschool for all Proposition 1B is a bad idea | Seattle Education: