Editorial - Accountability in Public Schools - NYTimes.com

Editorial - Accountability in Public Schools - NYTimes.com:

"Of course, those systems need to be sensible and fair. But the country will never get where it needs to be if we take the approach — as union leaders have sometimes done — that student test scores should be out of bounds when it comes to judging teacher effectiveness. That is an indefensible position. The unions can either help to create this system, or get left behind."

An Interview with Philanthropist Eli Broad - WSJ.com

An Interview with Philanthropist Eli Broad - WSJ.com:

"The Broad Foundation funds charter schools, including KIPP academies and the Green Dot network, as well as Teach for America. It trains reform-minded school administrators. And it offers financial rewards to urban school districts that improve performance through initiatives like merit pay for teachers. Mr. Broad tells me, 'we're at a golden moment now,' with a president and an education secretary who, he says, agree with his reform agenda.

The son of Lithuanian Jewish immigrants, Mr. Broad grew up in Detroit where he became the youngest person in the state of Michigan to pass the CPA exam. Since retiring, he and his wife Edythe, whom he met there, spend much of their time figuring out how to give away the $2.1 billion of the foundation that bears their names."

Pastorek: State likely to run New Orleans public schools for years - NOLA.com

Pastorek: State likely to run New Orleans public schools for years - NOLA.com:

"Though well-intentioned, the local board, with several newly elected members, needs more 'seasoning' and isn't prepared to take back schools, he said. Further, the Recovery District and the many charter schools it oversees have not had sufficient time to stabilize reform efforts. The Recovery District's first two years were consumed with crisis management, he said, and so in essence can't be counted as progress toward sustainable reform."

Find and share teachers documents, and teacher resources - docstoc

Find and share teachers documents, and teacher resources - docstoc:

"Teachers

Find and share teachers documents, teachers inspirational poems, and teacher resources. Download free teacher worksheets, thank you poems to teachers, teacher letters to welcome parents, and much more."

http://www.docstoc.com/documents/education/teachers/

“Race To The Top:” Feds Demand Too Much, Too Soon, For Too Little - California Progress Report

“Race To The Top:” Feds Demand Too Much, Too Soon, For Too Little - California Progress Report:

"Any effort to close the achievement gap in our schools that does not address the conditions that children grow up in is doomed to failure. Schools can only do so much in the time that they work with students. Until this country closes the gaps in job opportunities at a livable wage, health care, and affordable housing, efforts for improvements in the schools will have limited success. In addition, you can develop all the best tests in the world but if you don’t improve the conditions in the schools that students and teachers operate in, the test scores will not improve. As the famous farmer said, “weighing my hog doesn’t help it to grow heavier.”"

Top Educator's Top Teacher | Scholastic.com

Top Educator's Top Teacher Scholastic.com:


"Although she didn’t know it before this interview, she is special because she is Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's all-time favorite teacher—after his parents that is.
'Ms. McCampbell was a wonderful teacher,' Secretary Duncan told the Scholastic Kids Press Corps in an earlier interview. 'She really challenged me and pushed me further than I thought I could go. And having those teachers who really believe in you and stretch you are critically important.'
Duncan graduated from UCLS in 1982. McCampbell remembers him well.
'It is a great honor,' she said as she began to remember the Secretary of Education in high school. 'He was a serious student and that was even when sometimes the other kids weren't.'"

Area Leadership Meetings

Area Leadership Meetings

Community Partnership Meetings & Neighborhood Advisory Group

Neighborhood Services hosts or helps coordinate monthly meetings in each area to facilitate communication between the City and community on issues, policies, and priorities. Each month, guest speakers from various City departments and other agencies provide information on current community initiatives and opportunities for public participation.

Come to our next meeting to learn what is going on in your neighborhood! The Neighborhood Services Department serves the City using four geographic areas. View this map to see which area your neighborhood is in.

AREA 1 Neighborhood Advisory Group
Next Meeting: August 17 @ 6:30pm
Hart Senior Center
915 27th Street
Click Here to view Meeting Calendar

AREA 2 Community Partnership Meeting
Next Meeting: September 9 @ 7pm
Pannell Meadowview Community Center
2450 Meadowview Road
Click here to view Meeting Calendar

AREA 3 Community Partnership Meeting
Next Meeting: September 24 @ 7pm
Coloma Community Center
4623 T Street
Click here to view Meeting Calendar

AREA 4 Community Partnership Meeting
Next Meeting: September 14 @ 7pm
Robertson Community Center
3525 Norwood Ave.
Click here to view Meeting Calendar

The Rally for Hope! August 28, 2009 Postponed new date to be set....stay tuned

The Rally for Hope! August 28, 2009 Postponed new date to be set....stay tuned

Causes on Facebook Save our Teachers / Save our Schools

Save our Teachers / Save our Schools

We must stand up for our schools, our teachers and, most importantly, our children.
Donations Go To: PROJECT DREAM INCORPORATED A 501(c)(3) nonprofit

Positions:

1. Save Teachers' Jobs.
2. Save Our Schools.
3. The Rally for Hope! August 28, 2009 @ the State Capitol

In March of 2009, the Pink Friday movement began. An enthusiastic group of parents, teachers and community members joined together to stand up for schools in California.

Since that time our state has faced continued economic challenges, leaving the education community to do more with less.

We must stand up for our schools, our teachers and, most importantly, our children.

Please join us for The Rally for Hope! August 28, 2009 @ the State Capitol

SmallTalk: The real force behind mayoral control

SmallTalk: The real force behind mayoral control:


"It's none other than the world's richest man, Bill Gates. Gates secretly bankrolled the recent campaign to preserve N.Y. Mayor Bloomberg's one-man rule over the public schools.

According to a story in yesterday's N.Y. Post, Gates funneled about $4 million to the pro-mayoral-control forces during the recent debate in the state legislature. When questioned by the Post, a Gates spokesperson confirmed the donation and the approximate size."

Send In the Clowns: 3 Stooges, Gingrich, Sharpton & Duncan Hit the Road For Corporate “School Reform” | Black Agenda Report

Send In the Clowns: 3 Stooges, Gingrich, Sharpton & Duncan Hit the Road For Corporate “School Reform” Black Agenda Report:


"Back in the late 19th and early 20th century heydays of vaudeville, when the singers bombed, when the jokes fell flat and audience attention started wandering, management knew what to do. They would send in the clowns. Some things haven't changed.

Despite a decade of hard sell by right wing think tanks, foundations, and big media, the American people have not bought the corporate version of school reform. Most people just don't believe public schools should be privatized or militarized, or operated by business people like businesses instead of by educators, parents and communities in the interests of children, parents and communities, like the best schools always have been run. And most educators doubt that high stakes testing improves educational outcomes in any meaningful way.

Since the public debates on charter schools and privatizing education are ones that our elite cannot win, they have decreed there will be no debate. Instead of an honest public examination of the disastrous impact of No Child Left Behind, and its attendant decade of creeping educational privatization, corporate media, the Obama administration and its bipartisan allies are sending in the clowns with a 21st century three stooges remake starring the Rev. Al Sharpton, along with Republican former Speaker Newt Gingrich and Obama Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, elbowing and slapping at each other, yukking it up about their supposed political differences while they all come together around the corporate elite's version of “school reform.”"

Stanford U Study Shows Charter Schools Perform Worse Than Comparable Public Schools | Black Agenda Report

Stanford U Study Shows Charter Schools Perform Worse Than Comparable Public Schools Black Agenda Report:

"“The Obama administration position is based on ideology, not empirical data.”

Duncan responded to the study by urging charter school forces to pay more attention to quality. But he continues to demand that 5,000 schools be shut down, their teachers fired, and a quarter million new teachers hired. The Obama administration position is based on ideology, not empirical data, and would lead to a forced proliferation of charter schools in districts eager to hold on to federal dollars. If the Stanford study is any guide, half the new charters will be no better than the traditional schools, and most of the rest will be worse.

Unionized teachers are blamed for all the ills of urban education; it’s not a reasoned argument, but a matter of faith – and political prejudice. Charter schools are not private, but they are the privatizers’ foot in the door, a wedge issue to demonize unions in the Black community – even in those cities where many if not most public school teachers are Black. In Chicago, as Bruce Dixon reported in last week’s issue of Black Agenda Report, the proportion of Black teachers has dropped from 39 to 31 percent since 2002, because of school closings. In New Orleans, most of the school system has been replaced with charter schools, along with a disproportionate share of Black teachers, to the cheers of the Obama administration. It’s the same story all across the country."

Will Advanced Placement Replace the SAT? - Class Struggle - Jay Mathews on Education

Will Advanced Placement Replace the SAT? - Class Struggle - Jay Mathews on Education:

"This is likely to draw more high-profile colleges into the test-choice movement, since it lets them de-emphasize the SAT but still have some national standard to judge applicants. The admissions dean at Harvard, who has so far resisted the test-optional movement, has said he thinks the AP is a better predictor of college performance than the SAT. Switching AP for SAT would allow him and other Ivy deans to look flexible while still providing data for their painful annual culling of applicants."

Student Scores Stagnate: No Country Left Behind? (Education - Change.org)

Student Scores Stagnate: No Country Left Behind? (Education - Change.org):

"We demanded No Child Left Behind, but now it's the whole country may miss out. American children are not be getting any smarter or any dumber, explained Arne Duncan last week, fearing stagnation and complacency would not be good enough for the U.S. to compete globally. Numbers cited by Duncan last week found that in science, the United States is falling behind Canada, Japan and the Czech Republic. Duncan explained 'I think as a real economic imperative we have to educate our way to a better economy.'"

Schools Matter: Segregationist Society Wonders Why Achievement Gaps Persist

Schools Matter: Segregationist Society Wonders Why Achievement Gaps Persist:

"The failure chart here is a snapshot of Arlington, Virginia, but it could be Most Anywhere, USA. While corporate reformers berate public school teachers and castigate parents and abuse children with cram-down testing, the story of the return to apartheid schooling remains a non-story for the media and an unacknowledged reality for the dolts in charge of state testing programs.

Where there is apartheid, there is poverty; where there is poverty, there is the achievement gap. Where there is the achievement gap, there is the preservation of privilege for White America. What could be more horrendously elegant? What kind of democracy so clearly embraces an educational system that defines success strictly by race and income? But then, what kind of democracy puts its future in the hands of corporate oligarchs to decide?"

Going Small: Progress and Challenges of Philadelphia’s Small High Schools

Research for Action

WHAT'S NEW

NEW RELEASE! Going Small: Progress and Challenges of Philadelphia’s Small High Schools examines Philadelphia's experience with small high schools and finds that “going small” is a promising strategy for fostering student success, especially for students who face the most signficant challenges. However, it cautions that size alone will not produce better schools. The report identifies the resources and supports that are needed to make small schools successful.
Download the full report, the executive summary, and the Press release. This multiple-year study was supported by Carnegie Corporation.

Making the Most of Interim Assessment Data: Lessons from Philadelphia is a new Research for Action report that offers insights into how districts might capitalize on interim assessments to promote teacher learning and improve student achievement.
Download the full report or the executive summary

Urban School District Central Offices and the Implementation of New Small Autonomous Schools Initiatives

VUE 22: Honig Excerpt

New small autonomous schools initiatives have spread to urban districts nationwide. While their designs vary, these initiatives generally aim to convert large public high schools into multiple, smaller, more autonomous schools and to create new small autonomous public schools of various types. Initiative advocates argue, in part, that the sheer diversity of students in urban districts – and, arguably, other mid-sized to large districts – increases the urgency to reinvent schools into newer, smaller, more autonomous units that are more rigorous, caring, and responsive to individual students.

In turn, district central offices would expand student learning districtwide if they helped schools build their capacity for making key decisions about how to support their students, rather than mainly directed schools’ decisions. Such forms of district central office support depart starkly from traditional central office roles as regulators of or non-participants in reform efforts. What, more specifically, do urban school district central offices do when they enable the implementation of new small autonomous schools initiatives?

Educational research has shed little light on this question. For example, many studies of new small autonomous schools initiatives focus on school-level outcomes and implementation processes

Op-Ed Contributors - Smart Child Left Behind - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Contributors - Smart Child Left Behind - NYTimes.com:

"This comes as quite a surprise, as ever since the law was enacted in 2002, analysts and educators have worried that gifted pupils would be the ones left behind. While the law puts extraordinary pressure on schools to lift the performance of low-achieving students, it includes no incentives to accelerate the progress of high achievers.

Yet the new study, by the independent Center on Education Policy, showed that more students are reaching the “advanced” level on state tests now than in 2002. This led the authors to conclude that there is little evidence that high-achieving students have been shortchanged.

If only that were so. But like many miracle-drug claims, this conclusion is deeply flawed, for several reasons."

Local retired teachers stay active, involved :: The Fallbrook Village News

Local retired teachers stay active, involved :: The Fallbrook Village News:

"Board members of the CalRTA Division 81 (Fallbrook chapter) prepare invitations for a ‘Stay at Home Tea,’ which encourages participants to relax and home with a cup of tea and mail in a donation to support the teacher grant program. Board members shown include (seated, from left) Jewell Ford, Jean Whiteside, President Sandra Bell, Bobbie Smith, (standing) Sherry Ludwig, Laura Choate, Sally Whitlock, Lucile Reeder, Arlene Sharpe, Ruth Watto, Gigi Halladay and Joyce Brittain. (Not shown by actively participating: Lenora Sears.)"

School officials going to court for breaking pledge not to pray - Salt Lake Tribune

School officials going to court for breaking pledge not to pray - Salt Lake Tribune:

"Stevenson had alleged that the settlement not only prohibited employee-led prayer, but also kept employees from 'promoting, advancing, aiding, facilitating, endorsing or causing religious prayers or devotionals during school-sponsored events.'

Staver said the banquet was privately funded and argued the court order infringes on the right to free speech of the school employees and their spouses.
'Nobody who has any clue about constitutional law,' Staver said, 'would allow a court order of this magnitude.'"

voiceofsandiego.org: Schooled... Chula Vista Teachers Protest Schwarzenegger Visit

voiceofsandiego.org: Schooled... Chula Vista Teachers Protest Schwarzenegger Visit:

"'What we are saying is, 'Let's slow down,'' Groth said as he left the Chula Vista school. 'Changing the laws at the state would affect all districts. We're talking about local control. Local school boards would not have that control -- it would be dictated by Washington, D.C.'

Look for more debates like this in San Diego and around the state. This is going to be the issue to watch as California vies for more stimulus money. Will the federal pressure win out?"