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Sunday, July 2, 2017

Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 7/2/17



Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 7/2/17
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Joan Kramer's Story - The War Report





NEA President to Representative Assembly: We Have the Power... and They Know It
by mike simpson / 4h
NEA President to Representative Assembly: We Have the Power... and They Know It : NEA President to Representative Assembly: We Have the Power… and They Know It “This is not a drill,” NEA President Lily Eskelsen García told the 2017 NEA Representative Assembly. “We stand in a dangerous place. We stand between a profiteer and his profits. We have a president who resides at the dangerous intersectio
CURMUDGUCATION: Personalized Bait and Switch
by mike simpson / 4h
CURMUDGUCATION: Personalized Bait and Switch : Personalized Bait and Switch Personalized Learning is getting the hard sell these days. It's marketable for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that nobody really knows what Personalized Learning is. What it suggests is something appealing, like Individualized Education Programs for everyone. Personalized Learning fans like to trot out exe
NEA President: There Will Be No Photo Ops With DeVos - Teacher Beat - Education Week
by mike simpson / 5h
NEA President: There Will Be No Photo Ops With DeVos - Teacher Beat - Education Week : NEA President: There Will Be No Photo Ops With DeVos Boston By guest blogger Stephen Sawchuk NEA President LIly Esekelsen García drew an apparent line in the sand with the Trump administration and U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, saying she would not try to bridge the yawning policy and political gap be
Science teachers: DeVos’s Education Department is misinterpreting federal law - The Washington Post
by mike simpson / 5h
Science teachers: DeVos’s Education Department is misinterpreting federal law - The Washington Post : Science teachers: DeVos’s Education Department is misinterpreting federal law Science educators aren’t exactly thrilled with the Education Department under Betsy DeVos. They didn’t think much when President Trump recently pulled the United States out of the landmark Paris climate agreement (which
ICYMI + Catch up with CURMUDGUCATION
by mike simpson / 5h
CURMUDGUCATION : ICYMI + Catch up with CURMUDGUCATION Here's some reading for your holiday weekend. May it be a good one. Arizona Replaces Teachers with Persons One more state institutes a warm body law as a way of filling more teaching positions Washington State is Wealthy, But Doesn't Pay for Schools Can you guess how much rich Washington residents pay in taxes? Can anybody guess why the legisl
PA Teachers Lead Fight Against "Reckless" Bill Allowing Guns in Schools | Common Dreams
by mike simpson / 6h
PA Teachers Lead Fight Against "Reckless" Bill Allowing Guns in Schools | Common Dreams : PA Teachers Lead Fight Against "Reckless" Bill Allowing Guns in Schools State Senators vote to allow educators and school staff to carry guns to schools Bring Your Gun to School – Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Senate | gadflyonthewallblog - http://wp.me/p4QD1W-2wb via @StevenSinger3 The gun control advocacy g
Chinese Highlight of Dismal K–12 Enrollment Survey - Language Magazine
by mike simpson / 6h
Chinese Highlight of Dismal K–12 Enrollment Survey - Language Magazine : Chinese Highlight of Dismal K–12 Enrollment Survey The recently released National K–12 Foreign Language Enrollment Survey Report shows that a total of 10.6 million U.S. students ranging from kindergarten to twelfth grade are studying a world language, accounting for only about 20% of U.S. school children. As this is a first-
Florida public schools will lose nearly $100 million to charter schools | Blogs
by mike simpson / 6h
Florida public schools will lose nearly $100 million to charter schools | Blogs : Florida public schools will lose nearly $100 million to charter schools Thanks to Gov. Rick Scott's freshly signed education bill , Florida public school districts are now set to lose a massive chunk of cash to charter schools next year. According to data requested by the Miami Herald and The Tampa Bay Times , a pro
Joan Kramer's Story - The War Report
by mike simpson / 7h
Joan Kramer's Story : Joan Kramer's Story It is with immense saddness that The War Report has to inform all our followers that Joan Kramer passed away on Wednesday morning, June 28, 2017, losing her valiant battle with cancer. Joan was as much a part of The War Report as water was a part of her favorite pond, or reading was the passion of her life. Pleas e join our host Dr. James Avington Miller
Schools Matter: Why the Trump U Fraud Case Is Not Done
by mike simpson / 7h
Schools Matter: Why the Trump U Fraud Case Is Not Done : Why the Trump U Fraud Case Is Not Done When Donald Trump's lawyers cut a deal to pay $25 million to keep the President of the United States from ending up in court on racketeering charges related to the systematic defrauding of thousands of Trump "University" students, the judgment promised that any plaintiffs who refused settlement could t
Oklahoma's 2016 Teacher Of The Year Leaves For Better Pay In Texas : NPR Ed : NPR
by mike simpson / 7h
Oklahoma's 2016 Teacher Of The Year Leaves For Better Pay In Texas : NPR Ed : NPR : Teacher Of The Year In Oklahoma Moves To Texas For The Money About exactly a year ago we brought you the story of Shawn Sheehan, Oklahoma's 2016 Teacher of the Year. At the time, he and about 40 other educators were running for office in the state, wanting to make a change because, as Sheehan puts it, lawmakers we
Celebrate Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all
by mike simpson / 7h
Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all : Celebrate Diane Ravitch's blog A site to discuss better education for all D.C.: 100% of the Graduates of Struggling High School Accepted into College 1 by dianeravitch / 47min NPR reported that 100% of the graduates of a struggling high school are going to college. Usually, we hear this about charter schools, but they usually for
Happy fourth Sunday. | Fred Klonsky
by mike simpson / 8h
Happy fourth Sunday. | Fred Klonsky : Happy fourth Sunday. The Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) has just placed a six-foot-tall sculpture outside Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago that says “REAL FAKE” in metallic gold, uppercase letters. My drawings from this week’s blog: Having lived and worked under a flawed system of school accountability institut
Dilemmas in Scaling Up “Successful” Reforms (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice
by mike simpson / 8h
Dilemmas in Scaling Up “Successful” Reforms (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice : Dilemmas in Scaling Up “Successful” Reforms (Part 2) For decades, under the influence of efficiency-minded policymakers the “wisdom” of reform has been as follows: To solve serious school problems policymakers and philanthropists take “good” ideas, find the right people to implement them f
A Poem for Joan Kramer | Poetic Justice
by mike simpson / 8h
A Poem for Joan Kramer | Poetic Justice : A Poem for Joan Kramer In memory of our friend and dearest warrior Joan Kramer – may we all fight the good fight till the very end. Tribute to the Warriors Dark, deceitful, dreadful The war continues. Hidden from the public Children succumb to oblivion. Masses are found naked In the valley of corporate reform. Masses of children Stripped of their humanity

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Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 7/1/17
by mike simpson / 23h
Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 7/1/17 Featured Post Today is Diane's Birthday Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all Meeting Needs Of Homeless Youth: Public Schools vs. Government | 

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UPDATE VIDEO: NEA President to Representative Assembly: We Have the Power... and They Know It #NEARA17

NEA President to Representative Assembly: We Have the Power... and They Know It:

NEA President to Representative Assembly: We Have the Power… and They Know It




Remarks as Prepared for Delivery by NEA President Lily Eskelsen Garcia to the 96th NEA Representative Assembly - 2017 NEA Annual Meeting - https://ra.nea.org/speech/2017/remarks-preapred-delivery-nea-president-lily-eskelsen-garcia-96th-nea-representative-assembly/ via @neatoday

“This is not a drill,” NEA President Lily Eskelsen García told the 2017 NEA Representative Assembly. “We stand in a dangerous place. We stand between a profiteer and his profits. We have a president who resides at the dangerous intersection of arrogance and ignorance and travels with a moral compass that always points to his own self-interest.”
In her keynote address on Sunday, Eskelsen García laid out in stark terms the dangers posed by the agenda of President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, but reminded the 8,000 delegates gathered in the Boston Convention Center that “we can win. We have the power, and they know it.”
Eskelsen Garcia recalled how she had to turn down an invitation from DeVos to meet because the new Education Secretary failed to answer simple questions about her commitment to accountability and transparency for charter schools and to protecting our most vulnerable students.
We have have already seen some of Devos’ answers. She has made it clear that the Education Department under her leadership will pursue the most egregious school privatization agenda in the form of charter school and voucher expansion, and will not protect our most vulnerable students. The Trump/DeVos administration rescinded the Office of Civil Rights letter that the Obama administration sent to districts clearly stating that they were legally responsible for protecting transgendered students from discrimination.
Over 50k Signed This Open Letter. Add Your Name
NEA is renewing the call for Betsy DeVos to clearly and satisfactorily answer questions on the critical work of the federal Department of Education. Read Lily Eskelsen García’s letter to DeVos and add your name to our call for answers.
“I will not allow the National Education Association to be used by Donald Trump or Betsy DeVos,” Eskelsen García told the delegates to resounding applause. “I do not trust their motives. I do not believe their alternative facts. I see no reason to assume they will do what is best for our students and their families. There will be no photo-op!”
Eskelsen García recounted how many states – Arkansas, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.- have already scored victories against the Trump-DeVos privatization agenda. Educators in Massachusetts fought back an initiative on unaccountable charter school expansion, voters in Georgia rejected a referendum to give the state the power to takeover schools, and South Dakota educators worked with Republicans and Democrats to direct more revenue to the state’s public schools.
“We will find common ground with many Republicans and many Democrats on many issues. We will not find common ground with an administration that is cruel and callous to our children and their families,” Eskelsen García said.
The current administration, however, knows the NEA is a threat, and will not relent in its attacks on public schools and public school educators.
“They will try to take away your freedom to organize. They will try to take away your freedom to negotiate with a collective voice. They will try to silence us because when we win, the entire community wins. Working people who don’t even have access to a union win, because we’re there to fight for their kids’ schools and affordable college.”
This assault will also target younger, newer educators with lies and distortions about what the NEA is and what it stands for, in hopes of diminishing its ranks in the aftermath of an expected wave of retirments.
“They won’t succeed,” Eskelsen García told the delegates. “Because we know in our bones who we are. And we will tell every new colleague the truth about who we are: We are the members of the National Education Association. We are the voice of education professionals. Our work is fundamental to the nation, and we accept the profound trust that is placed in us.”NEA President to Representative Assembly: We Have the Power... and They Know It:

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CURMUDGUCATION: Personalized Bait and Switch

CURMUDGUCATION: Personalized Bait and Switch:

Personalized Bait and Switch



Personalized Learning is getting the hard sell these days. It's marketable for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that nobody really knows what Personalized Learning is.

What it suggests is something appealing, like Individualized Education Programs for everyone. Personalized Learning fans like to trot out exemplars like Chugach, Alaska, a remote, tiny town where a school system created a system in which each student had her own personal path to graduation, with projects, content, and assessment.

While there are plenty of problems with the Chugach thing, it's a good example of what most of us think Personalized Learning would mean. An educational program custom designed for each individual learner. Custom designed like a meal at a restaurant where you can choose the protein and spices and sauces and dishes and means of cooking and order exactly what you are hungry for.

But as Personalized Learning rolls out, that's not what it's like at all. 

From the College Board's personalized SAT prep courtesy of Khan Academy, through bold plans like this IBM personalized education pitch is something else entirely. This is just path-switching.

The Brand X that we're supposed to be escaping, the view of education that Personalized Learning is supposed to alter, the toxin for which Personalized Learning is the alleged antidote is an education CURMUDGUCATION: Personalized Bait and Switch:



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NEA President: There Will Be No Photo Ops With DeVos - Teacher Beat - Education Week

NEA President: There Will Be No Photo Ops With DeVos - Teacher Beat - Education Week:

NEA President: There Will Be No Photo Ops With DeVos

Image result for NEA President LIly Eskelsen García Betsy DeVos


Boston 
By guest blogger Stephen Sawchuk
NEA President LIly Esekelsen García drew an apparent line in the sand with the Trump administration and U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, saying she would not try to bridge the yawning policy and political gap between them.
"I will not allow the National Education Association to be used by Donald Trump or by Betsy DeVos," she said in a fiery keynote before thousands of delegates. "I do not trust their motives. I do not believe in 'alternative facts.' ... There will be no photo op." 
"We will find common ground with many Republicans and ...NEA President: There Will Be No Photo Ops With DeVos - Teacher Beat - Education Week:


President Donald Trump and his advisers probably didn’t expect his choice for education secretary to cause much of a fuss. After all, Rick Perry was tapped to run the Department of Energy, which he once said he wanted to eliminate. Senator Jeff Sessions, who has spent his career attacking voting rights, was up for attorney general. Scott Pruitt, nominated to run the EPA, has sued the agency at least 14 times. Even Ben Carson was offered a job.
“[DeVos] and her family have spent millions to promote failed private school vouchers and unaccountable for-profit charter schools while working to destabilize and defund public education,” the unions wrote. “This is a dangerous direction that will do nothing to help our most vulnerable students and will exacerbate glaring opportunity gaps.”
DeVos bolstered the case against her with a disastrous performance at her confirmation hearing. She was confused about basic education policy debates. She showed little familiarity with federal education law, and in some cases wouldn’t commit to enforcing it. In one viral moment, she even said schools might need guns to guard against “potential grizzlies.”
Ahead of DeVos’s confirmation vote, union leaders hammered her on cable news, and the NEA organized a million people to email senators in opposition to her nomination. At least 40,000 called the Capitol through a special switchboard the union set up.
DeVos was nonetheless confirmed by the Senate earlier this month, thanks to a tie-breaking vote from Vice President Mike Pence. Since then, she has only stumbledfurther, most egregiously after her visit two weeks ago to Jefferson Academy, a public middle school in Washington, D.C. Though she called the school “awesome” at the end of her tour, she later told the conservative publication Townhall that the teachers there were in “receive mode.” “They’re waiting to be told what they have to do, and that’s not going to bring success to an individual child,” she said. “You have to have teachers who are empowered to facilitate great teaching.”
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Science teachers: DeVos’s Education Department is misinterpreting federal law - The Washington Post

Science teachers: DeVos’s Education Department is misinterpreting federal law - The Washington Post:

Science teachers: DeVos’s Education Department is misinterpreting federal law


Science educators aren’t exactly thrilled with the Education Department under Betsy DeVos.
They didn’t think much when President Trump recently pulled the United States out of the landmark Paris climate agreement (which all countries had signed except Syria and Nicaragua) — and DeVos issued a statement in support. And many educators were concerned when the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank that strongly backs DeVos and does not believe in human-induced climate change, sent to thousands of K-12 and college science teachers materials that reject basic principles on which nearly all climate scientists agree. A group of Democratic senators asked the Education Department whether DeVos or her staff had anything to do with this Heartland project.
[Senators accuse DeVos of ‘quick about-face’ on climate change]
Now, the National Science Teachers Association and the STEM Education Coalition has sent a letter to the Education Department saying it is misinterpreting the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the federal K-12 education law that replaced No Child Left Behind, in regard to science and school accountability plans.
The Education Department did not respond to a query about this issue.
The department is reviewing state plans for holding schools accountable as required by ESSA. The law was passed in December 2015 to replace the flawed NCLB, which went into effect in Science teachers: DeVos’s Education Department is misinterpreting federal law - The Washington Post:
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