It’s Constitution Day: A quiz to see how much you know - The Washington Post

It’s Constitution Day: A quiz to see how much you know - The Washington Post:

It’s Constitution Day: A quiz to see how much you know

Here, again, is our annual quiz on Constitution Day, which occurs every year on Sept. 17 and which could be called the U.S. government’s birthday.

Constitution Day was created by Congress in 2004 to require that all schools which receive federal funding offer some type of “educational program” on the U.S. Constitution, but it doesn’t define what that should be.  Sept. 17 was chosen because it was the last session of the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, during which the final version  of the newly written U.S. Constitution was signed by 39 delegates.

Schools — pre-K through college — have taken different approaches to teaching the Constitution on this day, some with holding school fairs where information is shared, some with formal lessons on the Constitution. There are numerous online lessons available for teachers and students, including some by the National Archives,which suggest ways to teach six big ideas about the Constitution.

Take this quiz to see how much you know about the Constitution.

1

Who is considered the father of the Constitution?

Benjamin Franklin

George Washington

James Monroe

James Madison

2

Who was unanimously elected to preside over the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia?

Benjamin Franklin

George Washington

James Monroe

James Madison

3

Which word is not in the Constitution?It’s Constitution Day: A quiz to see how much you know - The Washington Post:

This Week In Education: Thompson: Hess & Jennings Cast Doubt on NCLB

This Week In Education: Thompson: Hess & Jennings Cast Doubt on NCLB:

Thompson: Hess & Jennings Cast Doubt on NCLB

The conservative spawn of the devil, Rick Hess, writes: "The acid test, I'd think, is whether they [test score increases] carry over to what matters: success in high school, college, and beyond. A decade of stagnant high school metrics is not reassuring, and it's possible that NCLB's command-and-control effort to improve schooling could be delivering up a false sense of progress."

 

Our liberal pragmatist hero, Jack Jennings, writes that "the lack of congruence between state test and NAEP results throws into doubt the ability of NCLB's accountability provisions to raise general students achievement." Jennings concludes, "The recent stalling of progress on NAEP since 2008 ... suggests  problems with the NCLB accountability approach." 

 

Is there a dimes worth of difference between the American Enterprise Institute scholar's and the consummate insider/scholar's conclusion?

 

Seriously, there is a difference between Hess's "musing" in Of Head Start and SAT and Jennings's thorough analysis of what worked and didn't work in accountability-driven reform. Hess starts with an old-fashioned conservative argument, raising the question of whether Head Start's gains are lasting. He then offers a specific critique of conservatives who keep whistling in the dark when bad news is announced. In this case, it is the decade-long decline of average SAT scores from 1514 for the class of 2006 to 1490 for the class of 2015 that reformers (who are now the new status quo) are scrambling to explain away.

 

Jennings, in Presidents, Congress, and the Public Schools, documents the long-term increase in student performance since 1970s, explaining why pre-NCLB improvement efforts were more successful than commonly assumed, and documenting the negative, unintended effects of NCLB's test-driven accountability system. 

 

Both the conservative and the liberal are refreshingly grounded in reality. Hess gets to the heart of the This Week In Education: Thompson: Hess & Jennings Cast Doubt on NCLB:

Opt Out Philly to take part in National Parent Strike on Sept. 17 - Working Educators

Opt Out Philly to take part in National Parent Strike on Sept. 17 - Working Educators:

Opt Out Philly to take part in National Parent Strike on Sept. 17

Opt Out Philly will be a part of the National Parent’s Strike. It’s not just a day it’s a national movement for parents to take back public education one test score at a time!

On Thursday, September 17, Opt Out Philly is participating in the National Parents Strike by asking parents, teachers and community members to do the following:

• Wear Red
• Submit your Refusal letters to your child’s school
• Change your profile pic to that of your children or an Opt Out image
• Use the following hashtags when you Tweet or share on social media: #optoutphilly #phillyparentstrike #welovephillyteachers #weloveourteachers #weloveourchildren and #nationalparentstrike

A press conference will be held in front of the School District of Philadelphia at 440 North Broad Street between 4:45 pm and 5:30 pm.

Last year, parents opted out at nearly twenty schools in the Philadelphia School District, in suburban districts like Quakertown, Lower Merion, Abington, and Lower Moreland, and in several of the state’s cyber charter schools.

"There is a strong correlation between standardized test scores and household income. It is simply unethical for Pennsylvania to spend $58.3 million annually on high-stakes tests that punish students living in poverty, English Language Learners, and special needs students. We want joy and curiosity, not compliance and discipline." Alison McDowell, parent of a Philadelphia School District 8th grader.

Parents are especially alarmed by how these tests affect English Language Learners and children with IEPs. Further, parents are heeding the warning of educators and researchers that the obsession with standardized testing is simply being used to label kids, teachers, and schools as failures.

“I am opposed to these tests being used simply to sort and separate students, rather than help them learn,” said Robin Roberts, School District of Philadelphia parent. “My child is more than a score.”

Parent leader Tonya Bah who has children at Wagner Middle School and Widener Memorial School says, “We, as parents and students, deserve to know our rights. We are here to break the code of silence surrounding standardized testing in Philadelphia. Every parent has a right to opt their child out of the test. Every student has a right to refuse the test.”

For more information, please visit the Opt Out Philly Blog, Facebook, or call 267-283-8273 (Tamara Anderson).Opt Out Philly to take part in National Parent Strike on Sept. 17 - Working Educators:

The Republican Debate: Did YOU Hear Education Mentioned?

The Republican Debate: Did YOU Hear Education Mentioned?:

The Republican Debate: Did YOU Hear Education Mentioned?

I did not remain glued to the screen when the debate was on last night, so when I stepped away, maybe it was then that they mentioned education and public schools.

I must have missed it.

Yes. I’m sure that was it. My guess is that they thoroughly discussed, at some point, the backbone of this nation—the preparation of our young people, our next generation, and the current state of how we are forming our country’s future.

I’m sure I just happened to miss when they delved into the following serious topics:

Common Core. I did hear Donald Trump briefly snipe at Gov. Jeb Bush about Common Core. But I must have missed when they delved into this topic more completely…whether or not Common Core State Standards are national standards usurping the power of the state and local governments. Little stuff like that.

High-Stakes Testing. Testing is such a serious issue with many parents in both parties. Surely the candidates touched upon it at least for a few minutes out of the three hours.

Vouchers. Jeb Bush did mention a Christian voucher school, but I missed any in-depth discussion about vouchers. Many Republicans likely support vouchers, but surely they discussed what their strategy is to replace public schools with them. I’m sure they The Republican Debate: Did YOU Hear Education Mentioned?:

How To Make The Most Of Your 10 Minutes With The Teacher : NPR Ed : NPR

How To Make The Most Of Your 10 Minutes With The Teacher : NPR Ed : NPR:

How To Make The Most Of Your 10 Minutes With The Teacher

So you finally get the chance to meet one-on-one with your child's teacher — now what?

Like a good Boy Scout, be prepared: Educators agree that doing your homework before a parent-teacher conference can make a big difference.

The Harvard Family Research Project's Tip Sheet for Parents suggests reviewing your child's work, grades and past teacher feedback. Ask your child about his experience at school and make a list of questions ahead of time to ask during the conference.Care.com — a website that matches parents with child caregivers — created a list of questions to print out and take with you.

A good parent-teacher conference, experts say, should cover three major topics: the child, the classroom and the future.

The Child

Most experts suggest telling the teacher about your child. Describe what they're like at home, what interests and excites them, and explain any issues at home that may be affecting your child at school.

"Often times we don't have any understanding of what happens when a child leaves school," says Amanda Wirene, a reading specialist at the Montessori School of Englewood in Chicago. "Often parents are our only way to know what's going on at home."

Be thorough, but do be aware of the time.

"You always get that one parent who wants to stay forever and tells you in great detail all about their child," says Colleen Holmes, assistant principal at Lincoln Elementary School in Erie, Pa. Share information, she says, and if you need to talk more, schedule another time.

The Classroom

Ask about what's happening in the classroom — both academically and socially.

"Parents have more access to student information than ever before," says Scot Graden, superintendent of Saline Area Schools in Saline, Mich. "Chances are, anything that's going to come up at parent-teacher conferences, the student will already know about it."

It's important for everyone to understand what the goal is at the end of the year. That way you all have a stake in that success.

Scot Graden, superintendent of schools in Saline, Mich.

By talking to your child in advance, you can ask more specific questions about grades or behaviors, says Graden.

Don't be afraid to ask the teacher to clarify what assessment or grades actually mean.

"Teachers can sometimes use educational jargon that may seem alien to you," Karen Mira writes in The Asian Parent, a parenting magazine in Singapore. "Don't be shy to ask your child's teacher to explain what a certain educational word means."

If teachers bring up areas for improvement, don't get defensive, says Holmes, the elementary school assistant principal.

And don't let the meetings be a dumping ground for pent-up concerns or frustrations.

"We don't want parents to load up on things they've wanted to discuss and are looking to have a sort of 'gotcha' moment," says Graden.

The same holds true for teachers: Lindsay Rollin, a second-grade teacher at Teachers College Community School in New York, says conferences should never be the first time parents are hearing about problems their child is having.

"I am not dropping bombs on anybody," she says.

Before the meeting is over, you should be sure you're clear on the teacher's How To Make The Most Of Your 10 Minutes With The Teacher : NPR Ed : NPR:

CURMUDGUCATION: The Public Education Dream

CURMUDGUCATION: The Public Education Dream:

The Public Education Dream

As much time as I spend writing about what I think people get wrong, it's important to keep some focus on what I want to see done right. So let's look at the major issues in education these days and consider what the positive outcome would be in a perfect world, and what would be a hopeful outcome in the real world.

SCHOOL CHOICE

Turning schools into a competitive marketplace is toxic for education. It does not drive improvement and, as currently practiced, it does not empower parents, but instead more commonly disempowers them.

In a Perfect World...

Choice pushers like to say that no child should be trapped in a failing school just because of her zip code. I say that no child should have to leave her neighborhood just to find a decent school. People don't want choice; they want good schools.

So in my perfect world, every child is able to attend a great school in his own neighborhood, with his neighbors, near where his family lives. Every school receives the funding and support it needs to be excellent.

In this world...

No more building a well-funded, well-supported school as an excuse to abandon the school alreadyexisting school. If we must have choice, let it be between excellent schools with, perhaps different focuses, or with the goal of improving a city and community through creating a diverse learning community.

But all schools must be fully funded and fully supported. No more "Well, a thousand students are trapped in this failing school, so we're going to invest millions of dollars in creating a great school for 100 of them."

CHARTERS

I have written a ton about this, so I'll be brief (ish).

In a perfect world...

If you want to set up a charter school, it must be fully funded, but not by stripping funds from public CURMUDGUCATION: The Public Education Dream:

Bronin Wins Hartford Democratic Primary for Mayor declaring – “We Did It.” - Wait What?

Bronin Wins Hartford Democratic Primary for Mayor declaring – “We Did It.” - Wait What?:

Bronin Wins Hartford Democratic Primary for Mayor declaring – “We Did It.”

Promising to plow all the snow off Hartford’s streets, cut taxes, expand city services, create jobs, properly fund the public schools and provide corporate welfare to any company that is thinking of leaving or coming to Hartford, Greenwich native and Golden Boy Luke Bronin has defeated Harford Mayor Pedro Segarra in Hartford’s Democratic Primary.

Thanks to Democrat Governor Dannel and the financial advantage that comes with the most expensive mayoral campaign in Connecticut history, Bronin and Malloy can now brag that they successfully took down the only Puerto Rican mayor of a major city in the fifty states.

A look back on Bronin’s path to victory reveals;

Bronin violated Connecticut campaign finance law by accepting illegal corporate contributions, a violation that should result in a fine from the Connecticut State Elections Commission.

Bronin’s wife Sarah Bronin not only violated Connecticut’s campaign finance law, but Connecticut’s State Ethics Laws, an action that should lead to her being suspended without pay from her job as a professor at the UConn School of Law.

Bronin lied to Hartford voters and the media about how long he had lived in the city, claiming that he was in Hartford from 2006-2009 when, in fact, he was living in India and Washington DC for almost half of that time.

Bronin claimed he would be Hartford’s “Education Mayor” and was ready to take control of the Hartford Board of Education, while deciding to send his two school-aged children to a private school in West Hartford.

Bronin attacked Mayor Pedro Segarra for raising taxes, going so far as to blame Segarra for the fact that city tax assessments “keep going up,” as if it was Segarra’s fault that property values were finally improving after the Great Recession.   This attack from a candidate who purchased a Hartford Brownstone for $400,000 in 2012, added hundreds of thousands of dollars in renovations and yet is still paying taxes in 2015-2016 on a house that is assessed at a value of $110,000

As for Bronin’s claim that Segarra raised taxes, Bronin failed to admit that the 2.5 Mill rate Bronin Wins Hartford Democratic Primary for Mayor declaring – “We Did It.” - Wait What?:

FERC Fasters In Solidarity With Dyett12 | PopularResistance.Org #FightForDyett

FERC Fasters In Solidarity With Dyett12 | PopularResistance.Org:

FERC Fasters In Solidarity With Dyett12

Washington, DC –  Beyond Extreme Energy (BXE) fasted in solidarity with organizers and hunger strikers working to reopen the Dyett highschool with a green energy curriculum. This was the 9th day of the BXE fast and the 30th day of the Dyett hunger strike. BXE is fasting at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) demanding an end to all new fossil fuel infrastructure permits. FERC’s continued permitting of fossil fuel projects disproportionately impacts poor folks and people of color due to project placement (like many LNG terminals in the Gulf South that need FERC approval) and climate change (like super-storms Katrina & Sandy).

The Dyett hunger strikers are demanding that their high school, in a mostly black area of Chicago, be reopened with a green energy curriculum. After years of organizing and numerous days without eating, their school will be reopened, but not with the requested curriculum—thus, their hunger strike continues. The courage of the Dyett hunger strikers, including Cathy Dale and Jeanette Taylor-Ramann who had to end their strike due to health concerns, has inspired BXE fasters to keep going, despite weakness, dizziness, hunger, and other pains.

BXE sees the fight for climate justice at FERC as inextricably tied to the fight of poor, black, and brown communities against the school to prison pipeline and the privatization of education. They are both symptoms of the same system that prioritizes private profit at the expense of people and the earth. Furthermore, many FERC approved projects are placed right next to threatened schools.

BXE sent this letter to the Dyett organizers and hunger strikers:

Dear Dyett 12 and all working to Save Dyett School,

Twelve people from Beyond Extreme Energy (BXE), ages 19-72, are undertaking an 18 day water only fast/hunger strike from September 8-25at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). We would like to express our deepest gratitude for the work that you are doing to SaveDyett Highschool and take back power in the south side of Chicago. We support all of your demands including a green technology curriculum, an important piece of addressing climate justice. Your hunger strike, long term organizing, and all of your actions are an inspiration to our group and many others across the country.

More about Our Fast at FERC:

In addition to the 12 full time fasters, others are undertaking shorter fasts in their communities or at FERC. The FERC is a powerful regulatory agency that is causing irreparable damage to the nation, and especially those living next to fracking wells and fracking infrastructure (like pipelines, compressor stations, gas refineries, and export terminals).We have written letters, lobbied, gone to meetings, talked to Congress, and FERC Fasters In Solidarity With Dyett12 | PopularResistance.Org:

The Proxy Wars That Constrain African Americans - The Atlantic

The Proxy Wars That Constrain African Americans - The Atlantic:

Race Is Always the Issue

Blackness has been relentlessly disparaged in American discourse—both covertly and overtly.

Every conversation about resources in the United States is also about race and racism. Like parents choosing a neighborhood for its “good schools,” Americans talk about prison and crime as a means of discussing race and racism in polite company.

One needn’t hate Hispanics to choose a school system with no Hispanics. One need not say that black people are violent apes to call the police when an injured human being who happens to be black knocks on your door for help. Freedom—from being stopped and frisked; from predatory criminal justice fines; from cells—is arguably the resource from which every other resource flows: education, marriage, income, wealth, happiness, actualization. In “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration,” Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a decoder ring for the language of criminality, revealing that it rests on the idea that America can only be great so long as America is fundamentally white.

The articulation of America’s greatness is rarely as strong as when the country is preparing to elect its next leader. If nothing else, the political class generates tons of text and ideas for ordinary readers to parse. Coates parses the ideology of white racism in crime policy and rhetoric from the Fugitive Slave Clause through Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton and on to Bernie Sanders. The occasion is the 50th anniversary of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s report, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action.”

During my doctoral training, Moynihan was offered as a cautionary tale to young academics. Moynihan, they said, dared to tell the truth about the culture of poverty in black communities. As a result, the liberal elite and angry black-activist oligarchy ran him out of society’s good graces, if not exactly out of town. We were warned against dabbling in social prescriptions: “Look what they did to Moynihan!”

We should all be so lucky as to be punished the way Moynihan was punished. Moynihan was a sociologist and a junior government official when he wrote his now-infamous treatise on the moral and economic decay of the black family. By the time he died in 2003, Moynihan was more than just a sociologist. He entered the rarified world of power. He worked with presidents. He commanded audiences within the cognitive elite. He had, I was once told by someone at a conference who’d had a bit too much to drink, a fantastic office at Harvard. Moynihan made it.

That he made it despite being “made into a racist,” as he put it, refutes the idea that being labeled a racist is some scarlet letter. It also raises questions about the renewed interest in revitalizing Moynihan’s reputation. Orlando Patterson and Ethan Fosse wrote in a new book that “history has been kind to Moynihan.” I agree. History has been kind to Moynihan. But it is not that empirical evidence of a deep culture of poverty among blacks has proven Moynihan’s case. Instead, the rapid acceleration and ruthless efficiencies of incarceration have made Moynihan’s theses seem prescient by intensifying every structural condition of race, poverty, and criminality in the United States. Moynihan is prescient only if one ignores that Moynihan went on to participate in the kind of policies and ideology that perpetuated the conditions he was originally critiquing. That kind of prescience is called winning by owning the rules of the game.

As voters prepare to turn the board over to a new gamemaster, Coates argues that the rules are still the same. Bill Clinton signed a crime bill in 1994 that effectively paid states to build prisons and reduce parole so that those prisons might stay full. In 2015, activists are circulating clips of Hillary Clinton online. In one, she can be heard calling kids “super predators” as an argument in support of her husband’s crime policies. Hillary likely borrowed the “super predators” language from a 1996 book that predicted a new crime wave unless these hyped up, extra-terrestrial, mostly poor, and almost always dark young people were locked away.

No one with any serious training in data, statistics, and crime attributes isolated crimes to a national trend armed with only nine months of data.

As fortune (or power) would have it, the narrative of a crime wave is reemerging. In the wake of Black Lives Matter protests all across the country, standing against The Proxy Wars That Constrain African Americans - The Atlantic:

New Report Decries Theft of Democracy in State School Takeovers | janresseger

New Report Decries Theft of Democracy in State School Takeovers | janresseger:

New Report Decries Theft of Democracy in State School Takeovers

The Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools is pushing back against the rush by state legislatures to take over the poorest schools in America’s big cities—in many cases to seize entire school districts—and run them without the oversight of an elected local school board.  Examples of such state takeovers abound these days from New Orleans to Little Rock to Philadelphia to Detroit to Newark, and recently, after the Alliance’s report went to press, Youngstown, Ohio. The new report from the Alliance declares, “(T)here is a different attack on minority  enfranchisement not addressed in the Voting Rights Act.  Instead of barriers to the ballot box, local elected governance is being dissolved altogether.”  State takeovers cluster in low-income, black and brown communities, the report explains, while across the United States 95 percent of school districts continue to be run by locally elected school boards.

In Out of Control: The Systematic Disenfranchisement of African American and Latino Communities Through State Takeovers, the Alliance proclaims: “This fall, tens of thousands of students are returning to schools that have been placed under state authority.  Elected school boards have been dissolved or stripped of their power and voters have been denied the right to local governance of their public schools. These state takeovers are happening almost exclusively in African American and Latino schools and districts—in many of the same communities that have experienced decades of underinvestment in their public schools and consistent attacks on their property, agency and self-determination. In the past decade, these takeovers have not only removed schools from local authorities, they are increasingly being used to facilitate the permanent transfer of the schools from public to private management.” State departments of education, ill-equipped to run schools and school districts, are increasingly bringing in enormous charter management companies to operate the schools now under state takeover.  While school choice is said by its proponents to empower families, parents in these now privately-run, state-held school districts find themselves disenfranchised and without leverage to shape their children’s schooling.

The new report traces the history of under-investment in these districts dominated by racial segregation and rapidly intensifying poverty: “Despite the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, despite the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the Voting Rights Act (both passed in 1965), public schools have never fully served low-income students of color. Our antiquated school funding system that relies on local property taxes to support public schools embeds inequities based on race and class. When the rise of manufacturing in northern cities attracted large numbers of African American families looking for jobs, they were met with housing discrimination and redlining that led to segregated neighborhoods and segregated schools. When manufacturing left these same cities, they were thrown into decline. The loss of jobs, and later, resistance to integration led to massive white flight, further concentrating poverty in urban centers and communities New Report Decries Theft of Democracy in State School Takeovers | janresseger:

California Democrats Starve Public Education

California Democrats Starve Public Education:

California Democrats Starve Public Education

We are often told that the right wing is acting to destroy public education with people like Wisconsin’s Governor Republican Scott Walker and the Koch brothers being properly vilified. For example, American Federation of Teacher’s President Randi Weingarten has written that, “We need to tell Govs. Tom Corbett in Pennsylvania (now defeated), Scott Walker in Wisconsin, Rick Snyder in Michigan and others that their chronic disinvestment in higher education is a one-way ticket out of the governor’s mansion.” (AFT on Campus Fall 2014 pg. 3)

Weingarten, who recently was involved in the American Federation of Teacher’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton for president, is suggesting that if we have any hope for higher education, we need to place Democrats in power. The same logic would apply to protecting all forms of public education.

However, in many ways, the Republicans are providing cover so that when the Democrats enact programs that starve public education of proper funding, their actions often go unreported and unnoticed.

Democrats are constantly expressing support for education. The policies they enact often do not match their rhetoric.

Many Democrats share a huge responsibility for the degradation of public education. They have overseen cuts in public educational funding. They have also supported anti-union policies demanding more work for less pay while attacking job protection, high stakes testing, and privatization leading to more charter schools and to contracting out much work that had been done previously in-house by a public school.

A prime example of Democrats overseeing the short changing of public education is California under Governor Jerry Brown. During the time he has been in office, starting in 2011, the Democrats have dominated the state government with huge majorities in both houses of the legislature while also holding all executive offices. However, funding for education in real dollar amounts has been lacking even as revenue has increased and despite a reformed budget process in place during the time Brown has been governor. Now, a simple majority of each house of the state legislature is sufficient to pass a budget. Previously, a two-thirds majority had been necessary.

Here is the recent record of spending on education in California.

The above numbers are striking.

In the budget approved for fiscal year 2008-2009, when Schwarzenegger was still governor and a two-thirds majority in each house of the legislature was necessary to pass a budget, spending for K-12 was $46.2 billion and for higher education stood at $13.6 billion. Both amounts of educational spending are higher for every subsequent year until 2015-2016, even after total state funds were higher than they were in 2008-2009.

Partly in response to the recession that began in 2008, spending on education for all of the years thereafter reached the lowest point in 2011-2012 which is after Brown became governor. Total spending for California Democrats Starve Public Education:

Shiny objects and false narratives: Time to refuse it all | educationalchemy

Shiny objects and false narratives: Time to refuse it all | educationalchemy:

Shiny objects and false narratives: Time to refuse it all

Joanne Weiss is the author of an article entitled Competing Principles:Race to the Top, a $4 billion US education reform effort, produced valuable lessons on designing a competition-based program.

Here’s the main page at Stanford: Competing Principles (SSIR)

Weiss’ main conclusion is: “Competitions are an imperfect way to drive change. Yet as our experience with Race to the Top shows, they can serve as a crucible of reform for forward-thinking leaders. A well-designed competition can spur innovation, create a marketplace for new ideas, engage multiple stakeholders in a broad-based reform effort, and create conditions in which rapid change is possible—even in a traditionally change-resistant field. We will not know the full impact of Race to the Top for several more years. Already, though, it has provided important lessons for policymakers.”

But what else do we need to know about Joanne Weiss and her “competing principles”?

In research I did a while back regarding Common Core I noted:

“The director of Race to the Top is Joanne Weiss, who worked with the Broad Foundation, which also has as one of its acting members Chester Finn with the Fordham Institute. Broad Foundation is also a member of ALEC, which sponsored the bill called the Parent Trigger Act.”

Derek Furr, author of “Education in the Age of Neoliberalism,” states:

Joanne Weiss, Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s chief of staff, wrote glowingly that, ‘The development of common standards and shared assessments radically alters the market for innovation in curriculum development, professional development, and formative assessments. … The adoption of common standards and shared assessments means that education entrepreneurs will enjoy national markets where the best products can be taken to scale.’ Taken in total, these reforms and initiatives effectively created a bonanza for a private sector that scurried to cash in.”

Jane Robbins in her post “Feds Confess Truth About Common Core” writes:

Joanne Weiss was the director of USED’s Race to the Top (RttT) program, the vehicle through which states were bribed Shiny objects and false narratives: Time to refuse it all | educationalchemy:

Seattle teachers' approach in contract fight drew on broad, community-based issues | OregonLive.com

Seattle teachers' approach in contract fight drew on broad, community-based issues | OregonLive.com:

Seattle teachers' approach in contract fight drew on broad, community-based issues

Margaret Gingrich, a second-grade teacher at Montlake Elementary school, carries a picket sign as she and other members of the Seattle Education Association, the union that represents striking teachers from the Seattle School District, file into a meeting hall, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2015, in Seattle to discuss a tentative contract agreement that was reached with the district Tuesday morning, the fifth day of the strike. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

SEATTLE — Striking Seattle teachers whoreached a tentative contract deal tapped into the concerns of the community to win unusual concessions: guaranteed 30-minute recess for elementary students and teams created to address race and equity in schools.

The dispute that delayed the school year for 53,000 Seattle students by a week reflects a strategy shift by teachers nationwide to take on broader issues that promote the public interest, experts say.

"Teachers are positioning themselves to be about much more than raising their own pay," said Bob Bruno, a professor of labor and employment at University of Illinois who closely follows teacher issues.

They are "moving the bargaining away from the worker-centered economic interest to the broader defense of education. It's not just the contractual dispute that we have. We want to use the collective bargaining process to improve and protect public education."

However, pay was a big sticking point as teachers who have gone six years without a state cost-of-living raise complained about expenses skyrocketing while the city's highly paid technology sector booms.

Teachers argued for better pay, fair teacher evaluations and reduced workloads, but they also tapped into community protests over too much testing, not enough recess and concerns about racial disparity in discipline and student performance. Many had complained that some schools only had 15 minutes of recess and that low-income schools were the most affected.

"By focusing on issues like recess, race equity and too much testing, they really highlighted the fact that their contract bargaining is about quality education for all kids," said Wayne Au, associate professor of education at University of Washington Bothell.

Jonathan Knapp, president of the Seattle Education Association, which represents 5,000 teachers, specialists and support staff, said the union took a new approach to bargaining, working closely with parents, communities of color and other unions.

"Educators are deciding that they need to really stand up and be the advocates for public education," he said.

Students will start school Thursday, after union leadership voted to suspend the strike that began Sept. 9. The full union membership will vote on the tentative contract Sunday.

"We are grateful to both bargaining teams for working literally through the night to resolve differences," district Superintendent Larry Nyland wrote in an email to families Seattle teachers' approach in contract fight drew on broad, community-based issues | OregonLive.com:

Teachers' union head spars with education reformer over New Orleans | Washington Examiner

Teachers' union head spars with education reformer over New Orleans | Washington Examiner:

Teachers' union head spars with education reformer over New Orleans

Did New Orleans adequately address problems facing special needs students in the wake of Hurricane Katrina? Influential figures on both sides of the debate met on the same stage Wednesday.

The conservative American Enterprise Institute hosted an eventlooking back at a decade of education reforms in New Orleans in the wake of Katrina. In order to get a variety of viewpoints, pro- and anti-charter school advocates were invited to participate. During the event's final panel, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, and Paul Pastorek, former Superintendent of Education in Louisiana, exchanged words.

Weingarten was speaking about how the education reform model used in New Orleans had not worked well in Detroit. Rather than replicate New Orleans, she described why successful reforms had worked.

"It's this engagement, collaboration, and intervention. ... I'm actually looking at what are the strategies that work regardless of what the governance structure is."

When Pastorek had a chance to speak, he said, "It's great to have all the things that Randi talks about, you know collaboration, engagement, and such, but if it doesn't lead to results, then some serious action needs to be taken because kids can't wait for adults to get their act together."

Moments later, Weingarten got the opportunity to respond. "I would actually just take issue with something that Paul said," Weingarten said. "Of course kids only have one shot at life, and if there's anybody who's involved in public education who don't think that it's urgent to help all kids they should get out. So the issue really becomes, what is the strategy that helps? … We had to actually hammer people over the head about issues of expulsions and special needs and these data points come in after or in light of that, and that we basically have taken away people's wherewithal to actually have some kind of independent voice I think we should be looking at other models as well."

"Randi, I don't think you have your facts right," Pastorek responded. "The facts are different. We didn't hammer people down, and we didn't have to put our foot down on expulsions. That's the way we built the system in the first place to make sure that it would work well. Like any system puts rules in place to address what people complain about."

"Are you saying that I'm wrong about the issue about expulsions or the issue about special needs children?" Weingarten interjected.

"I'm saying you're wrong about saying that we had to hammer people down," Pastorek said. "We monitored both special needs and we monitored expulsions. The special needs issues in New Orleans were actually very few. … You're exaggerating the problem. It is serious, it must be focused on, there must be a system to monitor it and assure that it's being done. And it is working there. So I would say you're wrong about that."

"Am I wrong about the 2013 suit by Southern Poverty Law Center about the failure to provide adequate education for students with special needs?" Weingarten said.

"People are entitled to file lawsuits any and every day, and they do," Teachers' union head spars with education reformer over New Orleans | Washington Examiner:

Another One: Illinois Releases PARCC Results | deutsch29

Another One: Illinois Releases PARCC Results | deutsch29:

Another One: Illinois Releases PARCC Results

It seems that early release of PARCC test results is all the rage among PARCC states. At first, PARCC was reluctant on September 10, 2015, to release its complete set of freshly-minted cut scores, but it did so by the end of the day.

The word from PARCC communications director, David Connerty-Marin, was that PARCC states would release results “on its own timeline.”

Apparently for some states, that time is now.

That was a Thursday. On Monday, September 14, 2015, Ohio was the first PARCC state to release information about its online PARCC test results; then, in a September 15, 2015, memo to the state ed board, Massachusetts commissioner Mitchell Chester wrote that Massachusetts would release prelim PARCC results on September 21, 2015.

Now, on September 16, 2015, Illinois has released information about its online PARCC results.

Of course, the Illinois PARCC results are lousy. No news there. That’s the story America has been hearing before PARCC even existed– that Common Core was “higher,” and its tests would be “rigorous.” (I remember hearing this in a department meeting in early 2010.)

From the September 16, 2015, Chicago Sun Times:

What Supt. Tony Smith revealed was a vast majority of those students in Illinois were not yet proficient in math or English language arts, with only between 28 percent and 38 percent of third- through eighth-graders meeting state standards. The percentage of high-schoolers in Algebra I or Integrated Math I who exceeded standards was zero; 17 percent met them.

More Illinois students were proficient in English than in math, except for third-graders. Of the five performance levels approved Wednesday by the Illinois State Board of Education, only children who score in levels 4 or 5 are considered proficient. That said, the test carries no consequences for anyone this year.

Smith called the preliminary scores a baseline for going forward, and said that the results alone don’t tell the whole story.

“I think we should use this new test as a new starting point for our conversations about progress, and what our kids need to be ready for the next level of what’s coming in the future,” he said.

Chin up, Illinois. These lousy scores are only a half-full glass. Besides, there will be Another One: Illinois Releases PARCC Results | deutsch29:

What It Takes to Build a Truly Equitable Education System - NEA Today

What It Takes to Build a Truly Equitable Education System - NEA Today:

What It Takes to Build a Truly Equitable Education System

A brief released on Tuesdy by the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) and supported in part by the Great Lake Center for Education Research & Practice underscores much of the same vision NEA has on providing equitable opportunities for every student—opportunities grounded in support, tools, resources, and time to learn despite race, zip code, or family background. The brief also stresses that relying on test scores is insufficient when it comes to understanding the progress of students, schools, districts, and public education in general.

Investing in “Equal Opportunity: What Would It Take to Build the Balance Wheel?”uses a framework based on the vision of Horace Mann, who 150 years ago argued that education should be free and universal. This, Mann believed, would contribute to a well-educated nation and be the “great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balance wheel of the social machinery.”

Yet, despite this vision and the herculean efforts among educators nationwide to provide students with the opportunities to learn, disparities in education continue to exist.

The brief, which is consistent with NEA’s Opportunity Dashboard and the vision of the GPS Criteria and Indicators Framework, offers a way to close the gap between students in affluent communities and their peers in poor, urban, and often predominantly minority school districts.

The brief’s author, Professor Jennifer King Rice of the University of Maryland, says that the key is to incorporate the kind of learning that encourages civic responsibility, democratic values, economic self-sufficiency, cultural competency and awareness, and social and economic opportunity. Her recommendations urge schools to look beyond narrow standardized test scores, which often punish schools and students who need help the most.

Her analysis also endorses several NEA-aligned points: (1) schools strive to provide What It Takes to Build a Truly Equitable Education System - NEA Today: