Intense talks on furloughs, give-backs The Educated Guess

The Educated Guess

Intense talks on furloughs, give-backs

Tags: furloughs, San Jose Unified, Stephen McMahon
Posted in State Budget, pay

The fate of the 23,000-plus teachers statewide who got pink slips by March 15 will be determined not only in Sacramento but also behind closed doors in each local school district office.
Pay cuts, give-backs and furlough days are quietly being negotiated between teachers and administrators in nearly district. California Watch reported that nearly half of the state’s 30 largest school districts are considering shortening the school year, including Los Angeles Unified. Superintendent Ramon Cortines is pushing teachers to accept a five-day furlough.
The Education Coalition – the state school boards association, the California Teachers Assn. and the state school administrators association – isn’t saying much about that at this point. After absorbing $16 billion in education cuts over the past two years, the coalition wants to keep pressure on the Legislature to restore some of the $2 billion in additional budget cuts that Gov. Schwarzenegger has proposed for next year.
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Eva Vega Diversity – Blog

Eva Vega Diversity – Blog

Anti-racism and swimming upstream

March 22nd, 2010

Had an interesting morning today talking with parents of elementary/ middle school who experienced a community moment where the diversity of their community was undermined. That was wordy wasn’t it? Yes, and intentional too!
To give you some more information, yesterday two boys (one white, one Mexican) were having a disagreement in class. Going back [...]

Congressional Pushback on Race to the Top, Competitive Grants - Politics K-12 - Education Week

Congressional Pushback on Race to the Top, Competitive Grants - Politics K-12 - Education Week

Congressional Pushback on Race to the Top, Competitive Grants

By Alyson Klein on March 22, 2010 7:12 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Last week, lawmakers began to turn up the pushback on the department'sbudget proposal, including an extension for the $4 billion Race to the Top program for another year.

Much of the ire came from the House Appropriations Committee, especially its chairman, Rep. David R. Obey, D-Wisc., who has questioned the administration's reform agenda in the past.

Here's a snippet from his opening statement at a hearing last week on the U.S. Department of Education's fiscal year 2011 budget, at which Secretary of Education Arne Duncan testified:

That request includes over $3.5 billion for new and untested initiatives, for which you will control how the funding is allocated to States, school districts, and other providers. In times like this, we need to worry about our core, foundational programs which go out by formula and are widely shared across the nation. A school district's ability to attract funds should not depend on its capacity to write a grant application.

I want to support this Administration and your education priorities, but not at the expense of reliable and predictable federal support that thousands of districts across the country depend on. Perhaps most troubling is the lack of any increase at all in the title I funds, which are broadly distributed by formula to all school districts in need. At the same time, the budget includes an extra $500 million to expand the Innovation Fund, which makes grants through competition run by your Department. Similarly, it seeks to more than double the appropriation for the Teacher Incentive Fund ($950 million) -

Fickle Fordham � The Quick and the Ed

Fickle Fordham � The Quick and the Ed

Fickle Fordham

from The Quick and the Ed by Chad Aldeman

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute staff can’t seem to agree about the proper role of the federal government in education reform. Andy Smarick, a Distinguished Visiting Fellow, has been reviewing the finalists for the $4 billion Race to the Top competitive grant program and has found the state plans wanting. (This is the same person who hoped Secretary Duncan would accept just three out of 41 applications and demand more state action in exchange for funds.) Here he is summing up those reviews:

I hope that person is showing the secretary these weak provisions, reminding him that he is under no obligation to fund a single one of these applications, and telling him that a three-word response to these states will ensure this program lives up to its lofty name and potential:
Not good enough.

So the feds should be stricter, huh? Well, not so fast. Here’s an excerpt of Fordham’s Gadfly from last Thursday, in which Mike Petrilli (Fordham’s Vice President for National Programs and Policy) says the feds are practicing “fickle federalism.” Here he credits the Obama Administration for being loose in their new Blueprint for ESEA

Sacramento Press / Paralympic Experience for youth athletes with physical or visual disabilities

Sacramento Press / Paralympic Experience for youth athletes with physical or visual disabilities

Paralympic Experience for youth athletes with physical or visual disabilities

This past weekend, Access Leisure hosted the 2010 Sacramento Paralympic Experience in conjunction with U.S. Paralympics, a division of the U.S. Olympic Committee.

The event was held California State University.

It introduced students with physical disabilities, ages 12-18, to Paralympic sports. In addition to hands-on participation in Track and Field, Goalball, Wheelchair Basketball and Handcycling, the students interacted with Paralympic athletes and coaches.

They strive to be able to compete in the 25th Annual A.C.T. Games this spring.

Sarah Blincoe races in a time-trial in her walker.

Local News | State bestows awards on 66 area schools | Seattle Times Newspaper

Local News | State bestows awards on 66 area schools | Seattle Times Newspaper

State bestows awards on 66 area schools

Sixty-six schools in King and Snohomish counties have received state awards for achievement this year.

By Linda Shaw

Seattle Times education reporter

More information

See a full list of recognized schools statewide:www.k12.wa.us/Communications/pressreleases.aspx

Sixty-six schools in King and Snohomish counties have received state awards for achievement this year.

The state Board of Education and the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction recently announced the winners, which total 174 schools statewide.

The schools were chosen based on their overall test scores, improvement in test scores, and the scores of students from low-income families.

A school's record compared with schools having similar student demographics also was taken into account.

Schools in King and Snohomish counties recognized for overall excellence are:

Newport High, Bellevue High, Sherwood Forest Elementary, Enatai Elementary, Clyde Hill Elementary, and

Executive Director At PALI Charter Resigns - Perdaily.com

Executive Director At PALI Charter Resigns - Perdaily.com

Executive Director At PALI Charter Resigns

Amy Dresser-Held has announced that she is leaving Palisades Charter High Schoolin June of this year for a start up charter. She was initially given the position by a Pali Board of Directors thatincluded her father-in-law Richard Held and his business partner Jim Suhr in what remains an undisclosed conflict of interest that should have disqualified them in this selection process. Now somebody else gets to clean up the mess she left behind...

In the time that Dresser-Held has been at Pali since 2006, she has created a top-down model of failed public education that has:
1. Awarded positions in the ever increasing bloated bureaucracy that has sucked up any financial advantage Pali received from going independent charter and getting rid of LAUSD's bloated bureaucracy.

The OUSD deficit: Labor weighs in | The Education Report

The OUSD deficit: Labor weighs in | The Education Report

The OUSD deficit: Labor weighs in

By Katy Murphy
Monday, March 22nd, 2010 at 12:23 pm in OEA, OUSD central office, budget, union contract.

Seven unions and the Alameda Central Labor Council say they have the answer to the Oakland school district’s budget woes: The Oakland Schools Labor Coalition has identified $35 million to cut from the school district’s general purpose fund. Thepresentation is posted on Wednesday night’s Oakland school board agenda.

The unions propose the following cutbacks:

• $10 million by cutting excess administrators (The state has a maximum administrator-to-teacher ratio, and OUSD was fined $1.3 million for having 78 too many administrators in 2006-07. The unions rounded that number up to 80 and multiplied by $125,000 to reach $10 million.)
• $10 million in “unmandated testing”
• $4.6 million by cutting the district’s reserves in half, down to 1 percent of the budget. This would require a waiver, as the state requires districts to have a 2 percent reserve.
• $7 million by somehow getting the district’s loan repayments waived

"School is really, really boring. I hate coming here." - LeaderTalk - Education Week

"School is really, really boring. I hate coming here." - LeaderTalk - Education Week

"School is really, really boring. I hate coming here."

By LeaderTalk Contributor on March 22, 2010 4:31 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Civic Enterprises has released its latest study, Raising Their Voices, concerning America’s dropout crisis. What resonated with me the most was the voices of the students in the report. Here are some samples:

“To me, high school is like elementary and middle school. It’s all the same. We’ve been doing the same thing over and over again.”

“If you just fight your way through it now and get through school ... eventually it will be interesting when you get into your career field.”

“I’m going to be honest: school is really, really boring. I hate coming here.”

Issue 1: Student boredom

I hate coming here. If you just fight your way through it. The same thing over and over again. These are pretty damning words. They also are pretty common. As the report noted, many students view high school as something that must betolerated as a stepping-stone to [something] better (emphasis added).

More on School Advisory Councils | Philadelphia Public School Notebook

More on School Advisory Councils | Philadelphia Public School Notebook

More on School Advisory Councils

by Erika Owens on Mar 22 2010

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• Renaissance Schools

We just created a centralized place for you to discuss Renaissance Schools. Over the weekend there was a training for the 262 members of the School Advisory Councils. The District has released the list of members of those councils.

The list of School Advisory Council members is broken out per school below.

Who Shouldn't Bother Applying for i3? - Politics K-12 - Education Week

Who Shouldn't Bother Applying for i3? - Politics K-12 - Education Week

Who Shouldn't Bother Applying for i3?

By Michele McNeil on March 22, 2010 4:09 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Those who don't know what the terms "internal validity" and "external validity" mean.

That's the message that came through loud and clear at Friday's technical assistance planning seminar in Baltimore, which the U.S. Department of Education put on to help folks navigate the Investing in Innovation, or i3, grant application process.

This $650 million grant program is open to school districts, and nonprofits that partner with a school district or a consortium of public schools. Applications are due May 11, with awards announced in September. And if attendance at Friday's seminar was any indication, the department is going to need a ton of peer reviewers to handle all of the applications. More than 400 people attended, with 1,000 online, and a crowd of wait-listed people gathered outside the hotel ballroom just in case there were no-shows. My sense was the audience was

Houses Passes Loans Bill, Minus Early Ed.

By Alyson Klein on March 22, 2010 3:10 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Obviously, this is the biggest news out of Congress this weekend. But, as we've mentioned before, a major change to the student lending program is hitching a ride with the health care overhaul.

The most important details for K-12 folks are that a) the bill shores up and provides an increase for Pell Grants, which expand access to college for low-income students, and b) in shoring up the Pell program, this bill may indirectly help appropriations for other key K-12 programs, including new Obama priorities.

The bill's supporters told me that if it didn't pass, they would have to find the

The Perimeter Primate: More interpersonal nastiness than usual

The Perimeter Primate: More interpersonal nastiness than usual

More interpersonal nastiness than usual

More interpersonal nastiness than usual, and the increased burden of expensive and time-consuming marketing tasks, are the human costs that school choice and competition have brought to real people in communities. This business-model practice helps to disintegrate intact, positive, community relationships which have been built up over time. I have yet to see how the milieu of increased competition between parents and schools is helping any children.

For families and their kids who have been in elementary school together and have established themselves as a community, the looming decision about middle school pits them against one another and breaks them up into factions. This happens in as early as the fourth and fifth grades, and again a few years later when middle-school families are under pressure to make their high school decision.

During the process, an unspoken-about tension builds up between parents and kids. People who once were collaborators on the same “team” increasingly find themselves judging each other. They repeatedly justify and emotionally defend their decisions, to both themselves and to each other. Parents and kids start to break their ties and actually become opponents who start sniffing each other out.

Survey of superintendents shows state could lose 15,000 teachers | GothamSchools

Survey of superintendents shows state could lose 15,000 teachers | GothamSchools

Survey of superintendents shows state could lose 15,000 teachers

by Anna Phillips

A survey sent out to school superintendents across New York State shows that proposed budget cuts could force the state to shed 15,000 teaching positions next year.

Distributed by the association representing school superintendents and the New York State School Boards Association, the survey went out to about 700 superintendents and roughly half returned it. Those who did reported a grim year ahead in which the state would have to lay off four percent of its teachers, increase class sizes, and reduce electives.

The bulk of those lost teaching positions would come from New York City’s schools, which Mayor Bloomberg has said could lose about 8,500 teachers if the state budget cuts go through unchanged. Though 16 Democratic state senators have written to Governor David Paterson saying they won’t approve any cuts to education, the Senate is now prepared to pass Paterson’s budget as is.

School employees who don’t have teaching positions are at an even greater risk of losing their jobs, the

One Step Closer on Student Loan Reform � The Quick and the Ed

One Step Closer on Student Loan Reform � The Quick and the Ed

One Step Closer on Student Loan Reform

March 22nd, 2010 | Category: Undergraduate Education

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Last night, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 219 to 212 to pass a bill that would make significant changes to the country’s health care system. The legislation represents the biggest victory to date in a process that’s been ongoing since 1993. Later this week, the Senate is expected to have another opportunity to end a policy process that also started that same year: federal student loan reform.

The same year that President Bill Clinton first began working on health care reform, Congress created the Direct Loan Program—an initiative that allowed the Department of Education to use U.S. Treasury funds to issue student loans directly to individuals instead of the existing and costlier model of guaranteeing and providing subsidies for identical loans issued by banks.

In September, the House passed the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA) a bill that ended the bank-based system for good. Last night, it voted to end those payments again by passing the Reconciliation Act of 2010 (PDF). In

Matching Preferences

from The Quick and the Ed by Chad Aldeman

Since the creation of the concept of a medical residency in the early 1900’s, hospitals faced challenges allocating their seats efficiently. In a never-ending race to sign residents before peer hospitals could beat them to it, residency programs began issuing offers to candidates earlier and earlier to the extent that by 1944 some students were applying in their sophomore year. Almost all the spots were filled by juniors, two full years in advance of actually beginning the residency program. Worse, these students had little incentive to work hard in their last two years of school, and hospitals were losing out from this competition because they were competing over prized students and were losing two years of potential academic records to assess candidates.
In 1945, schools decided to band together and agreed not to release student records until their senior year. This alleviated the problem of early placement offers, but created a new one. Some students received offers from their lower choices but were informed they were on waiting lists at their more preferred options. Imagine the student’s displeasure when they were forced into a decision on their second choice before coming off the waiting list for their first. Hospitals, too, were displeased with students who initially accepted their offers only to renege and turn it down later for one of their more preferred placements.

The Educated Reporter: Gist suggests why Central Falls made a splash.

The Educated Reporter: Gist suggests why Central Falls made a splash.

MONDAY, MARCH 22, 2010

Gist suggests why Central Falls made a splash.

I went to a reporters’ roundtable this morning with Deborah Gist, the schools superintendent for Rhode Island. Someone asked her the question that struck me from the start: Why did this turnaround get so much media attention? As I mentioned before, many schools have gone through reconstitution that involved teachers having to reapply for their jobs.

Gist suggested maybe it was because in a larger district, teachers removed from