Wednesday, June 2, 2010

'If I were a rich man' | Philadelphia Public School Notebook

'If I were a rich man'

by f on Jun 02 2010

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Lately when I think of the voucher or charter school movement, I hear Tevye from The Fiddler on the Roof singing, “If I Were a Rich Man.” This song became stuck in my head after reading in the Philadelphia Inquirer about the astronomical amounts of money donated to the gubernatorial campaign of State Senator Anthony Williams, primarily by three Bala Cynwyd businessmen.

According to the Inquirer, "The donations came from Students First, a Wynnewood-based PAC that promotes ‘school choice’ and the use of state funds to finance tuition at nonpublic schools. The PAC has been used by Joel Greenberg, Arthur Dantchik, and Jeff Yass, all executives at Susquehanna International Group L.L.P. as a vehicle to send money to Williams of Philadelphia.” These three individuals along with two other wealthy businessmen

Being unemployed. My bad side. � Fred Klonsky's blog

Being unemployed. My bad side.

by preaprez

For a while, blogger Alexander Russo kept suggesting that the numbers of pink-slipped teachers was overstated.
Many state laws require districts to RIF a teacher even if there is some possibility they might return. In Illinois, teachers must be RIFed 45 days before the end of the school year or be assured a job the following year.
But I’ve seen projections of between 150,000 and 200,000 education jobs lost nationally for the 2010/2011 school year. Maybe there will be more. Maybe less. But if you’re are one of them, it’s hard to figure if you are going to find another teaching job elsewhere or soon.
These are teachers. Families. Income. Mortgages. Food on the table.

New Jersey governor revises education money bid - Boston.com

New Jersey governor revises education money bid

By Beth DeFalco

Associated Press Writer / June 1, 2010

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TRENTON, N.J.—New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Tuesday made last-minute changes to the state's application for a $400 million federal "Race to the Top" education grant, more closely tying teacher merit pay and evaluations to student achievement.

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The new grant application also makes it easier to fire ineffective teachers, even ones with seniority - something expected to draw the ire of the state's largest teachers union, which last week signed off on the application wording.

"We greeted the news with a mixture of deep disappointment, utter frustration, and total outrage," NJEA president Barbara Keshishian said.

The New Jersey Education Association offered its support last week after meeting with Education Commissioner Bret Schundler, who agreed to make some changes to how merit pay would work.

For instance, part of merit-based bonuses would be given to schools so their staffs could vote on how to distribute it. The union prefers that approach to bonuses for educators whose students do well for several reasons, including that it would

Sustainable 2nd Century | UC Davis: Home

UC Davis releases Climate Action Plan

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The Sustainable 2nd Century celebrates UC Davis’ long-term commitment to environmental, economic and social sustainability. We use our strengths in teaching, research and public service to address society’s most pressing problems. Ideas that start on our campus — powered by faculty, students and staff — transform the world. Learn more...

Campus progress

Sourcing food sustainably

At UC Davis, more than 21 percent of food purchases for the 1.8 million meals served per year in campus's four residential dining halls are from local, organic or sustainable sources.

Take action

Find a compost bin on campus

Most campus eateries — the Memorial Union, Coffee House, Gunrock Pub, coffee kiosks and Aggie Stadium — host compost bins, as do the four residential dining halls.

Our research

CO2 levels threaten crops

Rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide interfere with plants’ ability to convert nitrate into protein and could threaten food quality, according to a new study from UC Davis researchers.

Student involvement

Sustainability related classes and majors

Sustainability issues are often incorporated into UC Davis curriculum, whether for an undergraduate class, graduate programs or continuing education for professionals.

Reform: Don't Ask, Don't Tell (When Reformy Ideas Fail) This Week In Education

This Week In Education

Reform: Don't Ask, Don't Tell (When Reformy Ideas Fail)

by Alexander Russo

image from the44diaries.files.wordpress.com

Look around to your favorite reformy blogs and see if any of them are talking about Chicago's TIF program. Probably not. It's the teacher pay pilot no one wants to talk about -- now that it's showing little or no impact. Reformers don't want to talk about it because, well, they like to pretend that all their ideas are brilliant and inevitably effective. Accountability and reflection that's for the little people. Media types don't want to talk about it because, well, they touted the

The Educated Reporter: Answering your graduation rate questions—sort of.

Answering your graduation rate questions—sort of.

by Linda Perlstein

I am frequently asked what the U.S. dropout rate is. That’s like asking how you make chocolate ice cream; there are so many possible methods and outcomes. It is easy for me to make recommendations when it comes to ice cream: Alton Brown if you have a lot of time or David Lebovitz if you don’t. Graduation rates, however, are more complicated.

Today NCES released its most recent calculations of graduation and dropout data, taken from the Common Core of Data. The dropout rate—the percentage of students enrolled in 2006-07 who were not enrolled in 2007-08 and had not completed school—was 4 percent. The average freshman on-time graduation rate—the percentage of high school students who entered ninth grade in 2004 and graduated in 2008—was 75 percent, up from 74 percent the previous year. Keep in mind that this doesn’t count the real people who entered school and graduated. It just compares the total number of students at the start to the number at the finish line. If 100,000 students drop out sophomore year and 100,000 exchange students from Belgium arrive junior year and get

Bloomberg calls for no teacher pay raises to avoid layoffs | GothamSchools

Bloomberg calls for no teacher pay raises to avoid layoffs

by Anna Phillips

Mayor Bloomberg called this morning for the city to eliminate pay raises for public school teachers to forestall teacher layoffs.
The mayor said that cutting the two percent pay raises the city had planned to offer teachers — already a decrease from a planned four percent raise — would prevent the city from laying off 4,400 teachers.
A spokesman for the city’s teachers union said he had just learned of the mayor’s plan to eliminate pay raises. The mayor’s statement is noticeably silent on whether the teachers union has agreed to this proposal. Teachers union president Michael Mulgrew has repeatedly taken the position that the best way for the city to avoid layoffs is through a retirement incentive.
Chancellor Joel Klein is scheduled to give a news conference about budget cuts at 11:45 am today and a spokesman for the Department of Education said he would not answer questions about the mayor’s plan before

Free Technology for Teachers: Willie Nelson and What the Web Can Answer Today

Willie Nelson and What the Web Can Answer Today

by noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne)

It seems that whenever I go somewhere to give a presentation about teaching with technology, there is someone in the audience who will say something to the effect of "this is great, but all of those sites are blocked in my school." This then leads to conversation about strategies for convincing administrators to relax strict filtering policies. One of the places I usually direct people to in those conversations is Unmasking the Digital Truth created byWes Fryer. Yesterday, I had an experience that led me to drafting an activity that could possibly help critics of open access to the web to understand how valuable the web can be in education.

Yesterday, as I was listening to Willie Nelson I got the urge to look up some information on the web about the hole that appears in his guitar. This led me to thinking about the number of questions that pop into my head every day and how many of those questions would have either gone unanswered or taken a long time to research before the advent of easy Internet access.

Here's my activity idea:
1. Have a person opposed to open Internet access in schools record the number and type of questions they

Smooth Move... Not. The NSBA's Hackneyed Attack on Charter Schools :: Frederick M. Hess

Frederick M. Hess's Blog

Smooth Move... Not. The NSBA's Hackneyed Attack on Charter Schools

by Frederick M. Hess • Jun 2, 2010 at 10:48 am
Cross-posted from Education Week

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I know and like the National School Boards Association. The NSBA's executive director, Anne Bryant, is a good friend who has my respect and admiration. I've had a good, longstanding partnership with the NSBA on various projects and have been an occasional contributor to their terrific American School Board Journal. All of this left me puzzled and disheartened when I read the NSBA's troubling and tone-deaf recommendationsregarding the treatment of charter schools in a reauthorized NCLB (or ESEA, for those eager to whitewash the now unpopular law).

The NSBA's five recommendations:

• "Require federally funded Charter Schools to abide by the same educational accountability requirements, and federal environmental, labor, and due process laws that traditional public

Education Research Report: Graduation and Dropout Rates from 2007-08

Graduation and Dropout Rates from 2007-08

by Jonathan Kantrowitz

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Nationwide, 75 percent of public high school students who started as freshmen in the fall of 2004 graduated high school in 2008—up from 74 percent who graduated on time in the spring of 2007.

This First Look presents findings associated with public high school graduation and event dropout counts for the 2007–08 school year. These data were collected as part of the Common Core of Data (CCD), a universe survey of public schools operating in the United States and associated other jurisdictions by the National Center for Education Statistics. Other findings include:

• The Average Freshmen Graduation Rate increased by at least 1 percentage point in 16 states and the District

Charter School on Failing List Now in Limbo voiceofsandiego.org,

Education

Charter School on Failing List Now in Limbo

A San Diego charter school that landed on a California list of persistently failing schools is now in limbo, after the San Diego Unified school board put off deciding whether it should continue to operate. It is another headache for King-Chavez Arts Academy, one in a system of Barrio Logan charter schools.

"If a charter school is not performing, I will close it," said school board member Katherine Nakamura. "This one has not performed and it pains me terribly. ... I don't think it's come up to snuff."

Charter schools are publicly funded but independently run. They get the right to exist from school districts that oversee and monitor them, but leave their day-to-day operations up to the charters. After school districts allow them to open, districts also decide periodically whether or not to renew them.

Districts can shut down charter schools that falter if they prove the charters fall short for specific reasons laid out in state law.

The school board decided to postpone voting on King-Chavez Arts Academy until it had judged it under those legal rules. School district staffers had advised the board to let the school continue operating.

King-Chavez leaders argued that it was a "misnomer" to call the school failing. Its test scores

Notes from the news, June 2 | Philadelphia Public School Notebook

Notes from the news, June 2

by Erika Owens

Former SRC commissioner to head academics in Milwaukee The Notebook blog
Heidi Ramirez is leaving Philly to become chief academic officer in new Milwaukee Superintendent Gregory Thornton's cabinet.
See also: Phila. educator Ramirez takes top post in Milwaukee The Inquirer
PA submits new Race to the Top application The Notebook blog
PA applies for round two of the federal stimulus funding. The state strengthened its application by getting many more school districts to sign on and say they'll work with the required reforms.
Rewriting the lesson plan The Inquirer (opinion)
Mighty Writers founder describes how alternative approaches can help kids learn.
A school where everyone performs The Inquirer
A profile of Philadelphia's Performing Arts Charter School.
Latest Fad 'Silly Bandz' Causing a Distraction in Schools KYW
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This Week In Education Pictures: Kids "Packed Like Sardines" In Class?

This Week In Education

Pictures: Kids "Packed Like Sardines" In Class?

by Alexander Russo

GOOD has a state-by-state infographic showing class sizes in various grade levels, a timely bit of information since class sizes are likely to go up as a result of the budget crunch (that is, assuming class sizes don't go down as teachers burrow back into classrooms to escape cuts). Anyway, I can't make heads or tails of it -- they're grey lockers, right? -- but maybe you can.

Remarks by the First Lady at "Let's Move Outside" event with Senator Harry Reid | The White House

Remarks by the First Lady at "Let's Move Outside" event with Senator Harry Reid

by The White House

Red Rock Canyon
Las Vegas, Nevada
2:45 P.M. PDT

MRS. OBAMA: Thank you. Thank you so much. (Applause.) Woohoo! (Laughter and applause.) Oh, my goodness, I am just delighted to be here. This is beautiful. And you notice, kids, how quiet it can be outside? We’re outside! I live in the city. It is never this quiet outside.

It is beautiful. This is just a perfect place for the launch of this new initiative.

But let me begin by thanking -- doing my thank you: First, to Senator Reid, not just for his kind introduction but all of the wonderful work he’s done to move this country forward. He’s just been a tremendous asset, not just to my husband, but to the country and to all of you kids. You know, everybody hears about what the President does, but Presidents can’t do anything if they don't have a good team. And Senator Reid is a member of that good team. So we’re just grateful to have him onboard. (Applause.)

And I have to thank Representative Titus for her tireless advocacy for the people of Nevada in Congress. She’s a member of the team and is doing a terrific job.

Assistant Secretary Suh, for everything that she’s doing along, with the folks in her agency to really preserve and protect places like this -- Red Rock Canyon here in Nevada and all across the country.

I also want to thank Nevada State -- Nevada State Controller Kim Wallin and State Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford as well for their leadership. (Applause.) Where are they? Where are you? There you are. (Applause.) Thank you all. Thank you for being here. Thank you for your support and your work.

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