Detroit Board of Education Files Title 6 Complaint - Badass Teachers Association:

Badass Teachers Association: Detroit Board of Education Files Title 6 Complaint:

Detroit Board of Education Files Title 6 Complaint

 Detroit, MI - Mr. Herman Davis, President of the Detroit Board of Education, and fellow Board members filed Title 6 complaints with Barbara McQuade of the Department of Justice. This decision came from the Board having been advised of serious complaints of abuse, misuse, fraud, and conflict of interest. This complaint was filed with the hopes of summoning a Grand Jury investigation to expose the wrongdoings of the Governor and his Emergency Managers, including, but not limited to:

• The creation of two separate and unequal school systems, one with primarily Caucasian students and the other primarily Black and Latino students.
• Emergency Managers making unilateral decisions, entering into no-bid contracts while voters, employees, students, taxpayers, and parents suffer the decisions and mismanagement of funds and resources.
• Issues that include: not filing for Federal grants for Head Start in a timely manner; anomalies and misusing of funds including a $50,000 bonus to the Detroit Public School Emergency Manager the  formation of the EAA, which denies poor children breakfast when children must travel great distances to school by city bus and, if the bus is late, arrive at school to locked doors, returning home without food or school; closing the newly renovated Southwestern High School; the creation of a community-wide deficit of appropriate learning atmospheres for special education students.; giving a nearly half million dollar contract to the Chancellor of the EAA to oversee the education of 7,000 of the poorest children in the nation; and making null and void actions of the elected board to request a Federal Investigation of possible illegal activities by the Emergency Manager.

Mr. Davis is continuing to collect affidavits of Detroit citizens, including parents, students, and teachers who work in Detroit that have been harmed, in which they check the item that identifies the harm to which they were exposed. He is also seeking complainants willing to give testimony. (See next page for form.)

                       # # #

TITLE 6 COMPLAINT FORM FOR COMPLAINANTS HARMED BY MICHIGAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

DATE____________NAME__________________________________ ADDRESS ____________________________________

CITY _____________________________ STATE _____­­___ PHONE ____________________

__ I wish the DOJ to keep my name AND info, given above, anonymous, and not reveal it without my written permission.

Governor Rick Snyder created two separate and unequal school systems. Both systems receive Federal funds. One system is primarily Caucasian students. In this system, authority over schools, BOTH public and charter, BOTH high performing and low performing resides with the State School Superintendent and State Board of Education as well as locally elected boards. Locally elected boards are provided with necessary resources to perform the functions of the position they were elected to. This discourages conflicts of interest, competitive bidding. Resources like training and professional assistance benefits and taxpayers students and helps ensure trust. Elected boards suffer no retaliation for meeting or requesting help from the Federal resources.

The other system is primarily Black and Latino students. In this system, authority over schools both public and charter, both high performing and low performing, resides with the Governor, his appointed administrators known as Emergency Managers which supersede locally elected boards, and state contractors who have sometimes been appointed to boards and able to vote for contracts to themselves. There is little or no competitive bidding. Locally elected boards are not provided with necessary resources to perform the duties expected by voters. This includes resources as simple as use of a multi-page copy machine and as important as notice about contracts the school district enters into. The elected board suffers from retaliation for meeting and requesting help from the Department of Justice. Under the direction of the Governor, Emergency Managers make unilateral decisions, enter into no bid contracts while voters, employees, students, tax payers and parents suffer the decisions, mismanagement of funds and resources, errors and retaliation. This includes but is not limited to:

- Not filing for Federal grants for Head Start in a timely manner.

- Detroit Public School Emergency Audits anomalies and misuse of funds. A $50,000 bonus to the Detroit Public Badass Teachers Association: Detroit Board of Education Files Title 6 Complaint:

Learn to Teach With Scholarships for Educators - Yahoo News

Learn to Teach With Scholarships for Educators - Yahoo News:

Learn to Teach With Scholarships for Educators

The legendary college basketball coach John Wooden reportedly once told an interviewer that "the teaching profession contributes more to the future of our society than any other single profession."

Becoming a teacher gives you the chance to directly affect future generations, and it continues to be a popular career path . O ver the last decade, more than 100,000 students each year have earned a bachelor's degree in education .

Of course, while teaching has a major effect on society, it isn't necessarily a career path for those who want to get rich. With an average starting salary around $36,000 , new teachers may not be equipped to pay off large amounts of student loan debt right away. Fortunately, to help minimize that debt, there are plenty of scholarships and other financial aid options available for those who are called to teach. 

Get [additional tips and advice on paying for college.]

For many aspiring teachers, government grant aid can cover a large part of college tuition, but it may come with some strings attached. To help bring quality teachers to high-need school districts, the U.S. government offers the TEACH grant program, which awards up to $4,000 per year to students pursuing a teaching degree.

The only catch is that if you receive an award, the grant commitment requires you to spend four years after you graduate teaching in a high-need field at a school serving low-income students. If this commitment isn't met within eight years, your grant funds are treated as student loans.

You can find similar grants for specific subject areas, too. The National Science Foundation'sRobert Noyce Teacher Scholarship supports aspiring STEM educators. Each year of support requires recipients to spend two years teaching science, technology or math in a high-need district. These awards are distributed by individual colleges and universities, so if you're going into STEM education, check with your financial aid office. 

Find [programs that offer student loan repayment help for teachers.]

Future teachers can also find plenty of private scholarships. Most of these awards don't come with any postgraduation commitments and many of them are available with one application, like the Phi Delta Kappa International Prospective Educator Scholarships.

PDK, a professional association for educators, awards more than 30 scholarships each year. To be eligible, you'll need to either join or be referred by a member of the association or its related Future Educators of America group. Ten general merit scholarships are given each year, along with a variety of awards that take residence, college or financial need into consideration.

The Pi Lambda Theta honor society, a companion organization to PDK, also offers its own set of scholarships. Membership in PLT is required before you apply, and getting in can be tough.

Student members must be at least a sophomore in college and have a minimum GPA of 3.5 on a 4.0 scale. Once you're in, you can apply for a number of awards specific to education students who are already in college or grad school.

Find out about [scholarships for teachers in specific subjects.]

The $1,500 Student Support Scholarship is the flagship program, and others are available depending on your level of study and area of focus. Like the PDK scholarships, applications are open through April 1 most years.

Members of the National Education Association Student Program are eligible to apply for the NEA-Retired Jack Kinnaman Memorial Scholarship.

The program provides a $2,000 scholarship award to a college student who is pursuing an education degree and demonstrates financial need.

Applications are due on or around April 15 each year, and make sure you start your application early. Unlike many programs, the Kinnaman Scholarship does not accept online or emailed applications.

Finally, in addition to federal grants and general scholarships, there are lots of subject-specific awards available. If you're pursuing a career in elementary education, for example, check out theNancy Larson Foundation. Each year, around a half dozen college juniors, seniors or graduate students in elementary education programs are named Nancy Larson Scholars.

If a career in health or physical education is your goal, there's the SHAPE America Bill Kane Scholarship, which provides a $1,000 award to a current undergrad. The best news is that you can apply for it now through Nov. 15. 

Matt Konrad has been with Scholarship America since 2005. He is an alumnus of the University of Minnesota and a former scholarship recipient.Learn to Teach With Scholarships for Educators - Yahoo News:

Feed the buzz - To BEE or Not To Bee That IS the Question

Sacramento News & Review - Feed the buzz - News - Local Stories - April 30, 2015:

Feed the buzz

Insiders discuss major changes coming soon to The Sacramento Bee—and whether McClatchy can stay in the print business

Major changes coming to The Sacramento Bee this next month, as soon as May 12 according to some workers, will emphasize digital and mobile news over traditional print.

ILLUSTRATION BY SN&R STAFF

You wouldn’t start a newspaper today. Online journalism startups, sure, those are launched all the time. But words printed on paper and delivered by trucks? That’s no way to break news, and increasingly readers aren’t interested.

So The Sacramento Bee and its parent, the McClatchy Co., have been trying to gradually phase out print—out of necessity—and rebuild as a digital-first news organization. “McClatchy has been trying to get out of the printing business for a while,” says Rick Edmonds, who writes about the newspaper industry for the Poynter Institute, an organization that provides training and research for journalists.

In the next few weeks, Bee readers will really see McClatchy’s digital transition plan in action. Because The Sacramento Bee is about to get a reboot.

It’s more than a redesign. According to folks inside the Bee, the print paper is going to look dramatically different. The old sections like “Sports” and “Our Region” are going to be thrown out. The paper will be smaller, and the page layout will have more graphics and photos. You might even find an opinion column taking up the entire front page (a potential treat for Marcos Breton fans). The website and mobile apps are getting an overhaul, too.

In the words of one Bee employee, some readers will probably “flip out” over the changes. “No newspaper has ever been designed like this. It’s going to be a completely new concept.”

But once you start re-imagining the Bee, all sorts of questions come to mind. What is a daily print newspaper good for? Assuming there are some readers who still want one, is there a business model that gives it to them? And when will the last Sacramento Bee land on the last reader’s doorstep?

It’s been a rough decade for newspapers generally, including the Bee. The Sacramento-based McClatchy swallowed the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain in 2005 and has been deflating ever since. Stock prices were above $75 a share in 2005. By 2009, they hit 44 cents, and today they are bouncing around $1.50.

Company revenues slid year after year. Last week, McClatchy announced that it lost $11.3 million in the first quarter of 2015. When reporting the losses in a conference call, McClatchy President Pat Talamantes underscored the need to get away from print and “hasten our digital transformation.”

The reasons for the declines are well known. The Internet has fragmented audiences. Classified-advertising revenues evaporated as soon as Craigslist came onto the scene. Display advertising—particularly from big national brands—has steadily declined.

In 2005, Sacramento Bee circulation was near its peak, distributing 298,000 issues on a weekday, and 346,000 on Sunday. Last year, weekday circulation had dropped to 181,000, and 298,000 for the Sunday paper.

So, for several years, the McClatchy company has been trimming, sometimes slashing. Consolidating printing operations, cutting back on distribution, selling off property, all in the name of “cutting the legacy costs of printing.”

“It also means cutting newsroom staff,” notes Edmonds. Ten percent of the Sacramento Bee newsroom was in laid off in 2008. There has been a steady stream of layoffs, a few jobs at a time, since.

But even as payroll shrank and circulation fell, the Bee’s overall audience kept growing. As did online revenue.

Only 34 percent of McClatchy’s revenue comes from print advertising today, while the portion of revenue from online ads and other sources is growing. Not enough to make up for the losses in print, but that’s why the company is trying to restructure. And that’s a big part of what is driving the reboot.

“It’s a cost-savings, efficiency measure,” says one employee.

A lot of the corporate restructuring has been invisible to readers. But they will notice the digital transition when it hits the page—as early as mid-May, according to a post by McClatchy Vice President of News Anders Gyllenhaal, in a recent post on the Poynter Institute website. Other Bee insiders cite May 12 as the big day.

The Bee papers in Sacramento, Modesto and Fresno, along with the Merced Sun-Star, will be the first McClatchy papers to undergo the transformation. The changes are “the first phase in a broad evolution in how we publish,” wrote Gyllenhaal.

Website users will notice more video, and Talamantes said last week that the company hopes video advertising will provide a significant revenue boost.

One prototype of the print paper shows a more open and more graphic layout. Gyllenhaal writes: “The print edition must play to its strengths. It’s not the way to deliver breaking news, but it’s hard to beat for in-depth reading, as a once-a-day compendium of news and to provide a sense of completion readers say they crave.”

Gyllenhaal also wrote that weekday papers would be reorganized into just three sections, two for smaller-market papers. That makes sense, says Edmonds. “There’s not enough advertising to produce a four- or six-section newspaper anymore,” he explained.

Bee employees with whom SN&R spoke say that readers will see a smaller newspaper, though the amount of actual news should stay about the same. Exactly what form the new sections will take is still a bit mysterious.

Gyllenhaal writes about a section devoted to in-depth reporting. Bee employees variously said there might be a section devoted to opinion, or the paper might be organized into sections along the lines of “Today, Now, Tomorrow” or “Go, See, Do.”

“I wouldn’t take that as gospel, some of those section titles,” said Ed Fletcher, a Bee reporter and spokesperson for the union at the paper.

Though several other Bee employees were willing to talk about the changes, they asked that their names not be used. The employees also said that they were told by Bee management not to speak with SN&R. Bee spokeswoman Pam Dinsmore told SN&R that “there’s nothing to discuss” about the changes.

Will Bee readers “flip out” about the redesign? Probably. When the newspaper recently announced the elimination of box scores in the sports section, it caused a flood of angry letters and cancellations. Finding out the daily paper no longer has a sports section will be a bigger adjustment for some.

“It’s obviously a risk,” said one Bee employee. “But I think there’s a point of view that, ’At some point, this model is just not going to work any more. So let’s just do it now. Let’s get ahead of it.’”

Fletcher agreed. “I think there’s an acknowledgment that we can’t stay the same and expect to thrive going forward,” he said.

The changes start to address some questions that have been facing newspapers for a long time now. How Sacramento News & Review - Feed the buzz - News - Local Stories - April 30, 2015:

Trying to Leave Behind 'No Child Left Behind' | Fast Forward | OZY

Trying to Leave Behind 'No Child Left Behind' | Fast Forward | OZY:

Trying to Leave Behind 'No Child Left Behind'

When it comes to public education in America, 2002 now seems light years in the past — a simpler time, where politicians like George W. Bush, John Boehner and Ted Kennedy could stand together on a stage and applaud the same law. President Bush declared at the time, with the naive confidence of a man who’d been in the White House only a year, “As of this hour, America’s schools will be on a new path of reform and a new path of results.”

Hardly. Instead, education has become a progressively more vicious policy battleground that cuts across partisan lines. And nothing has been the subject of more ire than No Child Left Behind, the law that the then president, future Speaker of the House and liberal Lion of the Senate all cheered. In the years since its passage, the law has prompted a right-wing revolt against federal meddling in public schools, even if that means sacrificing other school reforms Republicans hold dear. It’s also polarized the two parties to such a degree that few hold out hope a replacement currently being drafted by Congress will pass. Ironically, that will leave America with education regulations almost nobody likes.

This isn’t the first time Washington has attempted to rein in the Frankenstein it created in 2002. No Child Left Behind expired in 2007, and lawmakers proposed revisions in 2009, 2011 and 2013. Catherine Brown, vice president for education policy at the liberal Center for American Progress, says “a lot of people thought it was for real” this time, given an “increasing urgency in the country.” With veteran senators in both parties working to reform the law, backers were hopeful. But then the House of Representatives, as it is wont to do these days, threw a wrench in those plans.

Boehner and his Republican majority were all set to vote on, and pass, a new law earlier this year when GOP leaders surprised everyone by suddenly yanking it. The reason: A band of conservatives were refusing to vote for it. “It’s a tough sell with a lot of our base,” explains one conservative congressman, who declined to be identified. “In the last year and a half, education has become a huge issue.” Never mind that President Obama had threatened to veto the bill for going too far in conservatives’ direction. To those House Republicans, it didn’t roll back No Child Left Behind sufficiently. The Senate has since introduced a bipartisan consensus bill, which conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation have likewise panned. With the House revolt, the path to a new law “narrowed considerably,” concedes Brown.

“How can you find a place in the center where you can get enough votes and you can get a signature by the president?”

Michael Petrilli, president of the center-right Fordham Institute

States’ rights are at the heart of conservatives’ push to gut No Child Left Behind. The law created a web of requirements for public schools, things that had never been governed by the feds before, like how frequently to conduct standardized testing and how to measure student progress. The federal government was supposed to provide new funding pots to help schools meet these new requirements. It hasn’t. And some of the bars the law set for school achievement were far too ambitious, policymakers Trying to Leave Behind 'No Child Left Behind' | Fast Forward | OZY:

Holyoke teacher's union president responds to city schools being placed in receivership | masslive.com

Holyoke teacher's union president responds to city schools being placed in receivership | masslive.com:

Holyoke teacher's union president responds to city schools being placed in receivership

Gus Morales. (Michelle Williams / MassLive.com)

HOLYOKE -- The head of the city teacher's union says he's outraged that Holyoke Public Schools have been placed in receivership.

In an open letter, Holyoke Teachers Association President Gus Morales discussed the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education vote to declare Holyoke a "chronically underperforming" Level 5 district.

Morales believes the state education board ignored the wishes of most of the Holyoke Public School community. At a forum held on Monday, approximately 800 people attend, most of whom told board members they wished control of city schools to remain local.

He also thanked board members who voted against receivership, in the 8-3 vote.

Below is the full statement written by Morales.

The Holyoke Teachers Association is outraged that the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education voted to approve a state takeover of the Holyoke Public Schools. But the HTA remains undeterred in its efforts to work with the broader community to create the schools that Holyoke children deserve.Holyoke educators find a degree of satisfaction in the fact that the two members of the BESE who actually visited our schools voted against Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester's recommendation to place Holyoke Public Schools into receivership. Those board members, Mary Ann Stewart and Donald Willyard, questioned the findings of the report that was prepared by Chester's evaluation team and used as the basis for the takeover.

Holyoke educators also applaud the stand taken by BESE member Ed Doherty, who recognized that collective bargaining rights are a pathway to great schools - not an obstruction to them. He also voted against receivership.

For more than four hours on Monday evening at a public hearing before the vote, the BESE heard from a broad cross-section of parents, students,educators, elected officials and residents who overwhelmingly opposed the state takeover. The people testifying acknowledged the need to ensure that every student is receiving an excellent education and that work needs to be done to achieve that goal. But most expressed faith in the locally governed school system and its educators to meet those challenges.

Chester and the majority of the BESE ignored what they heard and moved on a plan that tramples on democratic principles and rights.

In working with members of the community for the past several months, the HTA has clearly seen that parents and students are hungry for a well-rounded education that includes art, physical education, social studies and a curriculum that reflects the culture of our city. Educators will continue to work toward that vision and to be vocal about our goals.

Gus Morales
HTA President

Holyoke teacher's union president responds to city schools being placed in receivership | masslive.com:

HOLYOKE SCHOOLS

• Holyoke Superintendent Sergio Paez to manage school operations under Commissioner Chester
• Holyoke teacher's union president responds to city schools being placed in receivership
• 10 takeaways on Holyoke schools in receivership
• Mayor Alex Morse disputes allegations he sought receivership for Holyoke schools
• Holyoke Superintendent of Schools addresses receivership vote

Standardized test backlash: More parents pull kids from exams as protest - CSMonitor.com

Standardized test backlash: More parents pull kids from exams as protest - CSMonitor.com:

Standardized test backlash: More parents pull kids from exams as protest

For parents fed up with the growing numbers of tests and the increasingly high stakes, 'opting out' is now the popular form of protest. Critics say it aims at the wrong target and ignores importance of data gleaned.

BOULDER, COLO. — It had never really occurred to Chantal Kovach to keep her fifth-grade son from taking Colorado's new annual assessments, until an e-mail started circulating among parents.

Ms. Kovach became concerned that the test would be measuring material her son's class hadn't covered yet, that the results wouldn't be available to his teacher until the fall. She also was worried that the class would have to devote significant hours to taking the test, and then more hours later in the spring taking other tests on the material they had studied.

But it wasn't until she went to the teacher, wondering if it might still be useful to her son as practice, that she made up her mind.

Recommended: 1912 eighth grade exam: Could you make it to high school in 1912?

"The feedback I got was that only when an educated group of parents takes a stand against this colossal waste of time will anything change," says Kovach, who kept her son home in March and will do so again next week and in May, and says many other parents at her Boulder, Colo., elementary school are doing the same.

TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE 1912 eighth grade exam: Could you make it to high school in 1912?

PHOTOS OF THE DAY Photos of the day 04/29

For a segment of parents fed up with the growing numbers of tests and the increasingly high stakes placed on their scores, "opting out" is now the popular form of protest. And in certain states and communities, the movement is gaining steam, with large percentages of parents and students sitting out required exams. With schools required by current federal law to test at least 95 percent of their populations, the burgeoning opt-out numbers raise the possibility of federal sanctions.

But what some see as important grass-roots protest against a testing regime they say has become too onerous and that has negative effects on children and education, others say is misguided, a protest that stems from understandable frustration but that aims at the wrong target, and that ignores the important information gained from such tests.

"I don’t think [the opt-out message] gets to the heart of what is really concerning large numbers of people," says Sonja Brookins Santelises, vice president of K-12 policy and practice for the Education Trust, which works to reduce the achievement gap among US student populations. Ms. Santelises acknowledges that there are too many tests and in some cases too much rote test prep – but says those are issues that can be solved by reducing unnecessary state and district assessments and with effective leadership that encourages real learning, not teaching to the test. And she sees the federally mandated annual assessments, which she and others say have never been better, as important tools that shine a spotlight on growth and on achievement gaps.

"We need a measure that allows us to get a snapshot that is consistent across communities and zip codes, that allows us to see where we are missing the mark for some groups of kids as opposed to others," says Santelises.

But parents choosing to opt out say the current tests cause unnecessary stress and harm to their kids, aren't useful diagnostically, and are pushing instruction and education in a direction they disagree with. Many, though not all, of them also disagree with the new Common Core standards and are unhappy with both the standards and with tests that they say are too rigorous and developmentally inappropriate.

The opt-out movement has surged in pockets, often concentrated in relatively affluent communities (hence Education Secretary Arne Duncan's infamous gaffe that "white suburban moms" were the ones unhappy with new tests) and in states or districts with policies more friendly to opting-out parents. (State and district policies vary wildly with what they mandate when it comes to testing.) But nowhere has seen higher rates of concentration than New York State, especially on Long Island.

"We are the epicenter," says Carol Burris, principal of South Side High School in Rockville Centre, N.Y. She calls the opt-out movement in New York an "act of civil disobedience that parents and teachers are engaging in because the schools that we love are being undermined by test-based reforms."

When the state gave its exams earlier this month, at least 200,000 students – out of the 1.1 million eligible students – opted out. That was up from about 60,000 last year, 30,000 of whom were from Long Island. In Ms. Burris's district, more than 70 percent of parents chose to have their children sit out the exam, she says, and in another Long Island district, the opt-out rate exceeded 80 percent.

"We knew the numbers had to be high enough that they can’t ignore it," Standardized test backlash: More parents pull kids from exams as protest - CSMonitor.com:

Did Anybody Ask Them? America's Expendables Have Their Say by Mark Naison | NewBlackMan (in Exile)

Did Anybody Ask Them? America's Expendables Have Their Say by Mark Naison | NewBlackMan (in Exile):

Did Anybody Ask Them? America's Expendables Have Their Say

by Mark Naison | @McFiredogg | special to NewBlackMan (in Exile)

Many people are upset with the unrest in Baltimore that followed the death of Freddie Gray in police custody. Fair enough. But if you spent time in the neighborhood he lived in, or in neighborhoods like it around the nation, you might still be upset, but you will not be surprised.

Abandoned houses. Vacant lots. Stray dogs. Rumors of mass displacement by the same people developing other parts of your city. No decent paying jobs anywhere.  Police who patrol your community who do not live in it. Friends and relatives pushed out of the area by rising rents even though much of the housing  in your neighborhood is decayed or vacant. Huge numbers of people rendered unemployable by felony convictions.

It is a toxic mix. And  the policies that are made to address it are made by people far far away, Who never include your voice.

So I raise the question. Did anybody ask the poor people of Baltimore when:

...their neighborhood schools  were closed and they were given charter schools and test after test?

...the State decided to wage the drug war in their community in a manner which would never be done at Johns Hopkins University, which has as many drugs on campus as any "hood" in Baltimore?

… they were encouraged to take subprime mortgages on the homes in their neighborhood and foreclosed on them en masse when the financial crisis hit?

…when their experience and music were appropriated and used it for entertainment?

You know the answer. No one ever asks them anything.

They are America's Expendables, whose suffering keeps our thriving prison industrial complex alive, and whose cries of pain are the material for popular music narratives, or hit tv series,  that people around the world turn to for pleasure or inspiration.

They have a lot to be angry about. Will you finally hear their voices? Will you finally ask them what they want and what they need?Did Anybody Ask Them? America's Expendables Have Their Say by Mark Naison | NewBlackMan (in Exile):

LAUSD audit finds school board candidate's charter operated in the red | 89.3 KPCC

LAUSD audit finds school board candidate's charter operated in the red | 89.3 KPCC:

LAUSD audit finds school board candidate's charter operated in the red

 A Los Angeles Unified school board member sought to withhold an inspector general audit finding Partnership to Uplift Communities' Lakeview Charter Academy was insolvent for nine years.

A charter spokeswoman said Wednesday that the charter recovered and is operating in the black this year.

The inspector general's finding comes as Ref Rodriguez, the charter organization's co-founder and corporate treasurer, continues his challenge of LAUSD school board incumbent Bennett Kayser in East Los Angeles District 5. 

The inspector general sent the audit last week to school board members and PUC administrators. But the report was sealed at the request of a board member based on attorney-client privilege – an action that L.A. Unified board members and the superintendent can take, but which they rarely invoke for routine charter audits.

Media outlets, including KPCC, filed requests for release of the audit.

More than one school board member would have Rodriguez as an ally if he ousts Kayser in their general election runoff on May 19. Although no one has publicly admitted to sealing the record ahead of the election, it remained unavailable until KPCC obtained the report Wednesday.

The audit focuses on the bookkeeping of one of PUC's 16 schools from July 2011 to June 2013. It noted numerous fiscal "deficiencies," including poorly documented expenditures, failure to meet minimum reserves and questionable oversight by the parent organization.

Jacqueline Elliot, PUC co-founder and CEO, agreed with many of the audit's findings. But she said Lakeview was a new charter campus and needed the financial support of the parent organization as it grew.

"We have a projection that their fund balance will continue to be healthy and continue to grow," Elliot said.

She said she welcomed the auditors' review. "We wanted to hear what they had to say," Elliot said, including their references to the need for "best practices."

Michael Soneff, Rodriguez's school board campaign manager, said the audit is being used against Rodriguez for political reasons.

"It is a shame that a helpful, routine report and an excellent school in good financial shape are being manipulated by those trying to influence the election,"  he said.LAUSD audit finds school board candidate's charter operated in the red | 89.3 KPCC:

OMG: CCSA's Ref Rodriguez's PUC Lakeview Charter Academy Audit http://bit.ly/1DD60Pe

Should We Hold Arne Duncan and Every Other Reformer Accountable for Every Child They Hurt? | John Thompson

Should We Hold Arne Duncan and Every Other Reformer Accountable for Every Child They Hurt? | John Thompson:

Should We Hold Arne Duncan and Every Other Reformer Accountable for Every Child They Hurt?

 USDOE Secretary Arne Duncan has long refused to face reality. Duncan still ramps up his incredible spin for test, sort, and punish by claiming that it is a civil rights issue. He continues to support the stress of high stakes testing as the means of overcoming the damage done by the stress of poverty.

Duncan is a perfect example of the truism that to a man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Rather than address the complex problems facing schools that serve intense concentrations of students from generational poverty, who have endured unconscionable trauma, he repeats the simple mantra - Accountability, Accountability, Accountability.

But, curiously, accountability hawks don't hold themselves responsible for a dozen years of failure with the NCLB bubble-in accountability regime.

In his latest public relations campaign, Duncan argues that consequences must be attached to tests for every student so that no child will slip through the cracks. But, at a minimum, his claim that high stakes testing protects "every child" is sloppy thinking. Seeking to protect every child is a job for a diagnostic not anaccountability metric. The proper use of an accountability metric would be holding individuals and systems accountable for the proper use of diagnostic metrics.

To try to protect every patient, doctors order screening tests. Accountability systems exist to ensure the quality of those systems and their proper usage. It would make no sense to punish doctors and technicians for the results that their tests produce (although some health care reformers sound like they want to do so.) Accountability systems also monitor the professionalism and practice of the health providers who use them. Doctors, however, would not submit to the type of output-driven accountability regimes that are being imposed on teachers.

If reformers want a data system and a set of procedures that covers every child and to hold educators accountable for using them in a professional manner to protect every child from education errors, then that's doable. In that case, let's agree to scrap high stakes testing and build better accountability systems, as well as better data-INFORMED systems for diagnostic purposes and better decision-making.

Education should pattern its accountability systems after medical care, while acknowledging that we don't have a fraction of that sector's resources. The first rule of school improvement should be, "First, Do No Harm." Then, we should institutionalize procedures to reduce harm, ranging from the school version of a doctor washing his hands to properly following best practice protocols.

A new era of accountability should begin with reformers taking the log from their eyes before trying to remove the mote from educators' eyes. It should start by holding accountability systems accountable. We could then proclaim to policymakers, school patrons, and other stakeholders that we have met the challenge, re-invented accountability and shown that education is worthy of increased investments.

By the way, too many reformers escalate the political battles, claiming that we need smarter accountability systems where everybody holds everybody else accountable. But, I wouldn't even contemplate systems where both sides hold each other accountable and risk the blame game spinning out of control. If reformers want to hold us accountable for each child, wouldn't we have to hold them accountable forevery child damaged by their policies? Wouldn't we end up in an even greater education civil war?

Or maybe we should ...

A superintendent from the Broad Academy told me that he wanted a computer and Should We Hold Arne Duncan and Every Other Reformer Accountable for Every Child They Hurt? | John Thompson:

THE WATCHDOGS: Feud threatens UNO schools | Chicago

THE WATCHDOGS: Feud threatens UNO schools | Chicago:

THE WATCHDOGS: Feud threatens UNO schools

Posted: 04/29/2015, 09:00pm | Dan Mihalopoulos

The Soccer Academy High School was built next to this elementary school that UNO also built with state money on the Southwest Side of Chicago. | Brian Jackson/Sun Times

A bitter split between the scandal-plagued United Neighborhood Organization and the charter school chain it founded could leave parents scrambling to find a new school for thousands of children come fall, the head of UNO is warning.

In a letter Wednesday to Chicago Board of Education Chairman David Vitale, UNO CEO Rick Cerda said the separately incorporated UNO Charter School Network owes his group nearly $3 million in management fees.

“This has put our non-profit under severe financial pressure,” Cerda wrote.

He told Vitale UNO “will be forced” to sell four buildings that are home to six schools unless the charter network pays what it owes his community group and also agrees to an unspecified “transition agreement.”

He said conflicts between UNO and the charter chain “raise a question as to whether the UCSN schools will continue to operate as they do today.”

“UCSN parents need to know if their children will be attending their same school in the fall or if they need to scramble to find a new place for their children,” Cerda said in the letter, which he also forwarded to the charter network’s teachers and staff.

The UNO Charter School Network has 16 schools — all in Chicago, all chartered by the Board of Ed and largely government-funded — that serve about 8,000 students, largely from Latino families on the Southwest Side and Northwest Side.

The charter board members say they’re ready to take over management of the schools when their contract with UNO runs out at the end of the school year and called Cerda’s letter “misleading and laced with factual inaccuracies.”

They say they stopped paying UNO because the community group hasn’t shown them what it’s doing with the money and because of a new “investigation of possible criminal misconduct at UNO,” according to records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.

Founded as a community organization, UNO began operating charter schools in 1998, taking advantage of increased public funding for privately operated charter schools. The UNO schools get tens of millions of dollars a year from the Chicago Public Schools.

Under a longstanding management deal, the charter network pays 10 percent of its budget to the UNO community group to run its schools.

For years, both organizations were led by longtime UNO leader Juan Rangel, a shrewd political operator who was co-chairman of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s first campaign for mayor in 2011. The groups shared offices and most of their board members.

But they appointed separate boards and Rangel was forced out after a 2013 Sun-Times investigation that revealed UNO paid millions from a $98 million state school-construction grant to companies owned by two brothers of Rangel’s top aide. House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, engineered the grant.

Last year, the charter board notified UNO’s new leadership it wouldn’t extend the management agreement — worth more than $6 million a year — beyond this school year.

Starting last fall, the charter network cut the payments it made to UNO, citing a refusal to provide “proper detail or justification” for the fees UNO got, records show.

On March 27, Richard Rodriguez, who heads the charter schools’ board, told Cerda the network was halting the payments entirely, citing accusations of “improper cash payments or bribes from an UNO vendor” to an UNO official. Rodriguez wrote that he understood the allegations were being investigated by the Cook County state’s attorney’s office, demanded details and said the THE WATCHDOGS: Feud threatens UNO schools | Chicago:

PARCC Changes Info on Its “States” Page to Encourage Other “Assessment Solutions” | deutsch29

PARCC Changes Info on Its “States” Page to Encourage Other “Assessment Solutions” | deutsch29:

PARCC Changes Info on Its “States” Page to Encourage Other “Assessment Solutions”

It seems that the PARCC consortium website has undergone a subtle change at some point between April 6, 2015, and April 15, 2015.

The change I noticed is to the PARCC consortium website page entitled, “PARCC States.”

Here is how the page used to read (April 6, 2015, archive):

PARCC: A State Look

Active PARCC Governing Board states^* collectively educate more than 12 million public K-12 students. The PARCC states include some of the highest performing states in the nation, and many are on the leading edge of education reform – including a number of winning Race to the Top states.

Our Goal

These states came together through a shared commitment to develop a new way of testing – far more rigorous than in the past, far more engaging for students and far better suited to measuring student understanding, reasoning and ability to apply concepts.

By working together, the PARCC states can collectively design a more high-quality assessment that builds a pathway to college and career readiness by the end of high school, mark students’ progress toward this goal from third grade up, and provide teachers with timely information to inform instruction and provide student support.

---

 ^*In addition to the active governing board states, Pennsylvania is a “participating” state, which means that it is interested in the consortium’s activities, but has made no decision about using the PARCC assessments.

Find your state in the list to the left of this page to see the latest on your state.

Now, compare the above language to the “PARCC States makeover” that happened at some point between April 6 and April 15:

PARCC States

A hallmark of the PARCC consortium is state involvement. PARCC states make policy and test design decisions and are in control of their assessment. Classroom teachers, principals, curriculum directors and other educators, as well as experts and state education agency staff from PARCC states have actively participated in developing and implementing the PARCC assessments. Students in 13 states are participating in the 2014-2015 administration of the PARCC tests: Arkansas, Colorado, District of Columbia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts,Mississippi, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, and Rhode Island.

PARCC states and Parcc Inc., the nonprofit project manager for the PARCC states, works with test vendors, states and other education entities interested in offering assessment solutions that include PARCC content.

Note: New York did not administer PARCC tests in 2015, and Louisiana has no 2015 contract for Pearson-vended PARCC.

Some interesting lingo here, though. Looks like PARCC governing board chair PARCC Changes Info on Its “States” Page to Encourage Other “Assessment Solutions” | deutsch29: