Monday, May 10, 2010

Education - Everything you need to know about the world of education.

Education- Everything you need to know about the world of education.

Shaw Middle struggles to move on after death

Many fear strides are in peril with Principal Betts dead in homicide.

MORE ON EDUCATION

Brian Betts, 42, was killed at his home last month. (TWP)

VALERIE STRAUSS

The Answer Sheet

A School Survival Guide for Parents (And Everyone Else)

Posted at 6:30 AM ET, 05/10/2010

How to get the right college roommate

Graduating high school seniors heading for college will soon get a questionnaire from the school of their choice about housing and roommate preferences. Under no circumstances should they take this form lightly because their freshman year is at stake.

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Posted by Valerie Strauss | Permalink | Comments (0)

JAY MATHEWS

Class Struggle

What's Right and Wrong With Our Schools

Posted at 10:00 PM ET, 05/ 9/2010

Child resisting school? Try a sabbatical for kids.

A kiddie sabbatical is a break to recharge batteries and reassess values. It isn’t the same thing as long-term home-schooling. The strain on parents is short-term. In the Internet age it is often possible to work at home for a few months. I have found no data on this, but we could be seeing a trend toward sabbaticals for the young and restless.

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Posted by Jay Mathews | Permalink | Comments (1)

Ed Buzz: The Nation

Teen insults move from walls to Web(New York Times)
Duncan vies to expand DOE role as partner (New York Times)
Alaska opts out of Race to Top(Education Week)
Arizona targets ethnic studies programs(Education Week)
Foundations offer $506M for ed. innovation (Education Week)
Boston-area Catholic schools welcome Haitian refugees (Associated Press)
Panel finds no preference in teacher-prep paths (Education Week)
Cyber high re-engages dropouts, at-risk students (Education Week)
56,000 images taken by Web cams on Penn. student laptops (USA Today)
Rule change takes aim at loophole in Title IX (New York Times)
Illinois school fighting cyber-bullying(Chicago Tribune)
Boston teachers asked to work more hours for same pay (Boston Globe)
Advocates weigh Obama's commitment to early ed. (Education Week)
Bilingual ed., immersion work equally well (Education Week)
Schools tackle teacher-on-teacher bullying (USA Today)

Ed Buzz: The Region

Cuccinelli backs Patrick Henry funding deal (Richmond Times Dispatch)
Frederick Community College ups tuition (The Gazette)
Va. phasing out test for special needs students (Examiner)
Md. falling behind on ed. reforms(Baltimore Sun)
Va. gets $59.8 million to overhaul struggling schools (Washington Times)
Are school lunches a threat to national security? (WUSA)
MoCo school investigates cyber-bully threats (WUSA)
P.W. dad wins FOIA fight with school board (Potomac News)

EducationNews.org

What Happened When Kindergarten Went Universal?

5.9.10 - Elizabeth U. Cascio - More than four decades after the first model preschool interventions, there is an

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Texas lawmakers discuss easing public school class size limit to cut costs

5.10.10 - AUSTIN – One of the oldest standards in Texas public schools – the strict limit on the size of elementary classes – could fall victim to...

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Mass. hunting for star teachers

5.10.10 - State education officials plan to announce today an aggressive campaign to recruit hundreds of successful teachers to work in underperforming schools in Boston and eight other troubled school...

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Jay Mathews: Child resisting school? Try a sabbatical for kids.

5.10.10 - A kiddie sabbatical is a break to recharge batteries and reassess values. It isn’t the same thing as long-term home-schooling. The strain on

Rise & Shine: Charter schools find fans in Assembly, Wall Street | GothamSchools

Rise & Shine: Charter schools find fans in Assembly, Wall Street

by Philissa Cramer

Hedge-fund executives have emerged as a dominant force in the charter school movement. (Times)
Several high-profile Assembly members are supporting the State Senate’s charter school bill. (Post)
Two charter school principals say the bill would make charters serve more special-needs students. (Post)
At its annual conference, the UFT honored the NAACP for its help stopping school closures. (Post)
Budget cuts were the primary focus at the all-day teachers union conference. (NY1)
Mayor Bloomberg could adjust his budget to prevent teacher layoffs if he wanted to. (Daily News)
The Times says teacher evaluation systems just aren’t good enough yet to do layoffs by quality.
The teachers behind Educators 4 Excellence say their school could lose 30 teachers to layoffs. (NY1)
The DOE is looking into testing claims against a principal who coached survey answers. (Daily News)
The UFT and community groups are seeking funding to fight absenteeism. (GothamSchools, Daily News)
One of Bronx Prep Charter’s first students describes how the school helped her get to UVA. (Post)
A school for deaf students says sign language means it can’t share space. (Daily News, Chelsea Now)
Staten Island’s community superintendent is resigning at the end of the school year. (S.I. Advance)
A 9-year-old budding supermodel is also a student in the gifted program at Queens’ PS 150. (Post)
Chancellor Klein explained to Israelis where to start in reforming the country’s schools. (Jerusalem Post)
The siblings of Obama’s newest Supreme Court nominee, Elana Kagan, teach in city schools. (Times)
Claims about how much class sizes will suffer because of budget cuts could be overblown. (Crain’s NY)
Michael Mulgrew says he apologized to Joel Klein for calling him “Chancellor Numbnuts.” (Post)
In letters, readers weigh in on the teachers union head’s not-so-nice nickname for the chancellor. (Post)
Internships and face time with celebrities are hot items in city schools’ auctions. (Wall Street Journal)
Across the country, parents are raising more money for schools to make up for budget cuts. (USA Today)
A tough budget climate is creating conditions ripe for what feels to many like teacher-bashing. (NPR)
Rochester takes an outsider’s view of mayoral control in New York City. (Democrat and Chronicle)
This is the first year that there is no Advanced Placement Italian exam. (Wall Street Journal)
China is paying to help some of its teachers to take positions in rural American schools. (Times)
New Jersey unveiled a proposal to award bonuses to teachers based on student test scores. (Times)
For the first time, the state is participating in a national program that rewards top teachers. (Daily News)
KIPP founder David Levin takes Sundays off from work, except when he calls former students. (Times)
Letter-writers respond to Charles Murray’s op-ed about why charter schools succeed. (Times)

Schools Matter: Valerie's Answer Sheet

Valerie's Answer Sheet

by Kenneth Libby

While Jay Mathews is busy reassuring his readers that his totally useless high school rankings list is safe despite the potential sale of Newsweek, or writing about a DI/Edison school reform attempts (without mentioning even a hint of criticism about either camp), Valerie Strauss is actually reporting on education news of significance. Today, Valerie posted a bit about the Imagine Schools situation in Florida and some of the other ongoing troubles. Jay spilled some ink about Imagine a few years back, but - surprise, surprise - it was a glowing review of Dennis and his crew of cronies, and he even managed to fit in a bit about KIPP. C'mon - don't act like you're surprised. From Valerie's WaPo page:

Charter schools: Is this the way it was supposed to work?

Learning Breaks Out in Britain During Testing Boycott That Affects 300,000 Children

by Jim Horn

Half of the 600,000 10 and 11 year-old children this morning (in Britain) will be reading books, poetry, and telling stories, rather than taking another meaningless standardized test. The boycott will continue through Wednesday. What joy, and what joy if only the prostisuits who run the NEA and the AFT would honor their Code of Ethics against child abuse here in America? From The Independent:

By Richard Garner, Education Editor
As many as 300,000 11-year-olds will find their national curriculum tests cancelled this morning.
The estimate of the amount of disruption caused by a boycott of the tests - in maths and English -

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Behind the charter 'movement': N.Y's hedge funders

Behind the charter 'movement': N.Y's hedge funders

by Mike Klonsky

It doesn't get any clearer than this. NYT's Gabriel & Medina lay it all out in "Charter Schools’ New Cheerleaders: Financiers."

Before now, said Boykin Curry, a partner in Eagle Capital Management, who attended the breakfast with Mr. Cuomo, “A lot of hedge fund and finance people in New York had decided state politics was too dirty and focused on their philanthropy.” Mr. Curry added, “I think there’s an awakening now that we can be a force in Albany, but we’ve got to play a tougher game than

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

by Mike Klonsky

This WaPo headline wins this week's It's-Not-From-The-Onion Award.

Hoping to raise school standards, Rhee adds 13 senior managers

Coming in a close second was this statement from BP spokesman Bill Salvin:

The Gulf oil spill containment process is "going exactly as we hoped"

The Educated Guess Commerical properties finagle out of property taxes

The Educated Guess

Commerical properties finagle out of property taxes

Posted in Adequacy suit, Revenue and taxes, Student spending

With state funding of K-12 schools stuck on empty for at least several more years, school districts and teachers unions are starting to sound the call for more local authority to raise taxes.
That’s not likely to happen, however, until the Legislature has the fortitude to confront the distortions caused by Proposition 13’s stranglehold on the state’s tax system. A new study by the California Tax Reform Association and the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment adds evidence to begin that discussion.
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By John Fensterwald on May 10th, 2010

Governor, State Board to ACLU: We’re on your side

Posted in Adequacy suit, Equity issues, Tenure

The lawsuit against Los Angeles Unified and the state over seniority-based teacher layoffs and massive cuts to state education funding has taken some strange twists.
Both Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state Board of Education – defendants in the case – are taking the position that they agree with the plaintiffs. Their message: Don’t sue us. We’re on the side of kids in low-income schools whose teachers have been handed pink slips in disproportionate numbers.
The latest jockeying – unusual but not unprecedented – may be a sign that an initial settlement is near. A court hearing into a preliminary injunction has been pushed back a week, until Tuesday, at the request of plaintiffs attorneys, in order to conduct negotiations with the defendants.
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By John Fensterwald on May 7th, 2010