Saturday, June 5, 2010

'Black flight' changing the makeup of Dallas schools | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News | Latest News

'Black flight' changing the makeup of Dallas schools

11:09 PM CDT on Saturday, June 5, 2010

First of two parts
By HOLLY K. HACKER and TAWNELL D. HOBBS / The Dallas Morning News
hhacker@dallasnews.com
tdhobbs@dallasnews.com

Every morning Vivian King drives her granddaughter past her neighborhood Dallas ISD school on the five-mile route to her charter school.

Also Online

Do students who leave DISD find better education elsewhere?

Chat: Discuss this story with the reporters at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday

Graphic: Enrollment patterns and trends

Graphic: DISD enrollment history by race, 1968-2009

Full coverage: Dallas ISD

Blog: Dallas ISD

Blog: The Education Front

More education news

Both are "recognized" public schools, but King believes the A.W. Brown-Fellowship Leadership Academy offers her granddaughter, 6-year-old Vivica Griffin, a better education.

"We didn't want her to go to the schools around here," King said.

King's decision makes her part of a historic shift in Dallas ISD: The number of black children attending DISD schools has reached its lowest point since 1965.

The movement mirrors, on a smaller scale, massive white flight from the district in the 1970s.

Black students formed a majority in Dallas schools through the 1980s and '90s. Over the last 10 years, though, the number of black children has fallen by nearly 20,000, or about a third. Meanwhile, Hispanic children have filled their seats as the district's overall enrollment remains fairly flat at about 157,000.

Today, about 41,000 black students attend DISD schools. They make up 26 percent of the district compared with 106,000 Hispanic children, or 68 percent. White students are 5 percent of the district.

The trend seen in Dallas schools is part of a larger national move away from inner cities for many black families, but the plunge is

Schools Matter: Do Your Homework Before Doing Business

Do Your Homework Before Doing Business

by Kenneth Libby

This recent piece from Chris Young of the Pittsburgh City Paper is a must-read piece for any follower of the Imagine Schools. [Background on the Pittsburg Imagine situation here]

Who could resist this kind of marketing blitz?:

When you watch the video, it's hard to see why anyone would oppose bringing Imagine Schools into their district. The students on film look so happy.
"We are ... Imagine!" they shout in unison from their classrooms.
Watching the video on April 7 were two dozen Hazelwood residents, gathered in the pews at

The Washington Teacher: No WTU Elections For You: If President George Parker Has Anything To Do With It !

No WTU Elections For You: If President George Parker Has Anything To Do With It !

by The Wash. Teacher

The Washington Teachers' Union (WTU) is looking a bit iffy these days in terms of election preparedness thanks to teachers' union prez' George Parker. And with less than three weeks to go until school is out, things just keep getting stickier. It seems that there will be no WTU elections for officers- not yet if George Parker has his way. First the elections committee was bungled and AFT President Randi Weingarten had to intervene and oversee a secret ballot for the elections committee. After the elections committee was elected last week, I received a courtesy copy of an email from the WTU Elections Committee Chairperson, Claudette Carson since I am running as a candidate for the WTU General Vice President. Carson asserts that when the WTU election committee asked union president George Parker to provide copies of the most current membership list, two most recent union dues report and all nominating petitions for all elected positions submitted by April 30, 2010- George Parker REFUSED to provide the necessary information so that the elections committee could proceed with union elections. Now that's a way for Parker to stay in office.

Each week until our union elections move forward as required by our WTU constitution, I plan to publish a

Module 5 TEU ED 667 | Reflections on Teaching

Module 5 TEU ED 667

June 5th, 2010 · No Comments · ED667

Here is the slideshow for this training:

Module5

View more presentations from Alice Mercer.

'I don't remember' source of West complaint, says Archie | Philadelphia Public School Notebook

'I don't remember' source of West complaint, says Archie

by Benjamin Herold

School Reform Commission chairman Robert Archie said Friday that he “doesn’t remember” who alerted him about a potential conflict of interest on the advisory council that voted on matching West Philadelphia High School with a turnaround provider – though he thought the complaint serious enough to delay the SRC

The Bay Citizen - Educators Are Opposed to Obama’s School Plan - NYTimes.com

Colleges Extend the Welcome Mat to Students’ Pets

By JACQUES STEINBERG 3:11 PM ET

In an increasingly competitive recruiting market for top students, becoming pet-friendly is another way for a college to differentiate itself.

The Choice: Pets in Dorms Q & A

Facing Cuts in Federal Aid, For-Profit Colleges Are in a Fight

By TAMAR LEWIN

The U.S. will soon propose regulations that would cut off federal aid to for-profit colleges whose graduates cannot earn enough to repay their student loans.

Educators Are Opposed to Obama’s School Plan

By GERRY SHIH

Clashes over a new bid for millions of dollars in federal education money have resulted in a weakened bid that the government could well reject.

Gladys Veronica Juca, an illegal immigrant from Ecuador, at graduation on Friday from Queensborough Community College.

With Diplomas in Hand, but Without Legal Status

By FERNANDA SANTOS

The many members of the Queensborough Community College Class of 2010 who are living in the United States illegally have concerns over their prospects.

Paul Garabedian, Mathematician at N.Y.U., Dies at 82

By KENNETH CHANG

Computer computations by Dr. Garabedian, a longtime New York University professor, helped lead to fuel-efficient wings for modern jetliners.

Sotomayor Making Good on a Commitment to a Scrappy College With a Family Tie

By LISA W. FODERARO

The justice was to have visited last year, but her nomination to the Supreme Court meant a change in plans.

Katie Brown, 11, and her mother, Linda, follow California Virtual Academy's online science curriculum at their home in San Jose.

Public Financing Supports Growth of Online Charter Schools

By CAROL POGASH

Virtual charter schools are part of an expanding network but their rapid growth is accompanied by a number of unanswered questions.

Margaret Fuller: America’s First Public Intellectual | Lefty Parent

Margaret Fuller: America’s First Public Intellectual

by Cooper Zale

On the 200th anniversary of her birth, Unitarian-Universalists are rediscovering and celebrating one of the giants of their movement, Margaret Fuller. She is acknowledged in the recent UU World article as one of the trio of key thinkers that defined the philosophy of Transcendentalism that emerged in the mid 19th Century as a challenge to the prevailing patriarchal “command and control” paradigm of the emerging capitalism, industrialism, and the related social engineering that was popular in mainstream progressive Protestant denominations, including mainstream Unitarianism.

Obscured in history, perhaps because of her gender, Fuller may in fact have played the critical role (as what some call America’s first public intellectual) in putting forward the Transcendentalist ideas of a more humanistic self-directed vision of human progress. Maybe more so than her colleagues Emerson and Thoreau, she championed those ideas in American popular cultural to counter the prevailing top-down model of social development.

Though it may sound like an oxymoron to contemporary UUs, in Massachusetts at the turn of the 19th Century

SCUSD DAC Bylaw Revision Subcommittee Reports Out Education News & Comment

Education News & Comment

SCUSD DAC Bylaw Revision Subcommittee Reports Out

Dear DAC,

The attachment for the bylaws contains the following edits to the May 11 presentation. These changes were suggested by members and the legal review and help with clarity. They have been reviewed by the Executive Board and do not represent substantive changes. It is proposed that suggestions for substantive change to either the revised or certified bylaws be addressed by the amendment process next year.

The comparison attachment presents the highlights of the changes from the current certified bylaws to the proposed revised bylaws.

The amendments attachment presents one possible approach to implementing the substantive changes suggested by the legal review by the district’s outside counsel.

Respectfully submitted,

Léo Bennett-Cauchon

Click here to go to the SCUSD DAC Bylaw Revision Page

Top 25 sacdac.org Post on docstoc.com 6-5-10

Saturday coffee. � Fred Klonsky's blog

Saturday coffee.

by preaprez

We had our coffee at Letezia’s before the rain came. Good rain. The garden in the back can use a good soaking.
There a lot that has been shitty in the world this week. But this morning I feel good.
My colleague, the PE teacher, ran the Sunburst Marathon in South Bend this morning. The 4th grade teacher who went with him (who also runs, but decided he would do the half marathon today) just posted on Facebook that the PE teacher did well enough to qualify for the Boston marathon.
Plus, the school year is winding down. Three kid days left. Then a records/planning day. Then the kids come in on Friday to pick up their report cards. 30 minutes later they are out the door. The fifth graders gone for good, which is (most years and this year for sure) bittersweet.
John Wooden.
Growing up in L.A. in the sixties, there was no shortage of sports heroes. The Dodgers boasted Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale and Duke Snyder among others. The Lakers had the great Elgin Baylor, Jerry West, and later, Wilt Chamberlain. UCLA basketball featured Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Gail Goodrich and Henry Bibby.
But perhaps the dominant sports figure was not a player, but a teacher and a coach. Coach John Wooden died yesterday at the age of 99.
The perfect game.
A lot of people are rethinking the lesson of the missed call at first.
I like this one from Dave Zirin.

The incredible class and calm Galarraga has shown is an ideal of a word that has

At UMass Boston’s graduation, a vision shared - The Boston Globe

At UMass Boston’s graduation, a vision shared

Victoria Reggie Kennedy received an honorary doctor of laws degree yesterday from the UMass chancellor, J. Keith Motley. (Wendy Maeda/Globe Staff)

By Susan Milligan

Globe Staff / June 5, 2010

Text size – +

Invoking the words and dreams of her late husband, Victoria Reggie Kennedy laid out for University of Massachusetts Boston graduates yesterday a vision for the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the US Senate as a place where students from grade school to graduate school can become part of the nation’s ongoing political history.

	Discuss
	COMMENTS (0)

The institute, to be built on the UMass campus, “will not be, as some have cynically suggested, a static library or a shrine, either to my husband or even to the US Senate,’’ Kennedy said in her keynote address to thousands of UMass graduates, addressing critics’ complaints that the center would be more of a tribute than a learning tool.

Instead, she said, the center will be interactive, allowing visitors and students to reenact debates, learn the histories of each individual Senate desk and its past occupant, and study the legislative process.

“It will be a dynamic center of learning and engagement that takes advantage of 21st-century technology to provide each visitor with a unique and information-rich, personalized experience that literally will bring history alive,’’ Kennedy said in the commencement address on a warm, sunny morning.

The senator’s widow also received an honorary doctor of laws degree, an award UMass chancellor J. Keith Motley said was earned for her “strong advocacy for women, children, and families,’’ as well as her work against gun violence.

Another Bay Stater, US Representative Edward J. Markey, was given the Chancellor’s Medal for Exemplary Leadership for his three decades of work on energy and the environment. Markey, a Democrat and the dean of the Massachusetts congressional delegation, chairs the Select Committee on Global Warming and Energy Independent, coauthored the House climate change bill,

Congress: close the hedge fund loophole

Click here for a larger version of Moveon.org's chart

One of the most egregious tax loopholes is the "hedge fund loophole."

These wealthy money managers, some of whom earn more than $1 billion per year, pay just a fraction of the tax rate paid by working people.

They get away with this because they convinced an earlier Congress to call their compensation for managing money, known as "carried interest," to be investment income rather than the equivalent of a salary or wages. And they even avoid Social Security taxes on their huge incomes.

Now, Congress is moving towards fixing this by closing the "hedge fund loophole" as part of the financial reform package that has passed the House and the Senate already.

With such enormous incomes, these hedge fund titans have a lot of clout in Congress and have managed to stave off closing the loophole many times before. They will not let this loophole close without a fight and the vote will be very close. It is time for super wealthy hedge fund managers to pay as much as the rest of us.

Personalized Assessment �Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech

Personalized Assessment

by Dean Shareski

Cross posted at Tech Learning
One of the current buzz words in the world of educational technology is “personalized learning” I’ve used it often and while it’s been used prior to the influx of technology in schools, the internet is making it more of a reality and possibility than ever before. If indeed we believe in the value of a personalized learning experience then I think we also need to consider what personalized assessment and evaluation might look like as well.
Trying to define or actualize the concept of personalized learning in schools is still a little fuzzy. Here are a few examples that I think exemplify personalized learning
Will Richardson shares the story of a high school Spanish teacher who decided his students would learn Spanish in the context of their passions or interests. For one student that meant finding a Spanish fashion designer and blogger to connect with and simply begin by reading her blog and leaving comments. Not only was this highly motivating for the student but as a bonus, the designer ended up asking the student to help her learn

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

Rhabdomyoma? On to the finals...

Lanson Tang, 14, of Potomac, Md., among last 10 in national spelling bee.

In Arizona, a school mural controversy

Associated Press

In Arizona, an elementary school principal is said to have ordered that the faces of some children depicted in a giant mural be lightened after receiving complaints about the ethnicity of the kids.

The Arizona Republic reports that Jeff Lane, the principal at Miller Valley Elementary School in Prescott, said he sent artists out only to fix shading.

But R.E. Wall, the leader of Prescott’s Downtown Mural Projects, said he was ordered to lighten the skin tone on the "Go on Green" mural, which covers two walls outside Miller Valley and was designed to advertise a campaign for environmentally friendly transportation.

How brain drains will save the world

In this era of rising college expectations -- more applications, more students and more university places than ever -- we Americans remain very insular. We think nothing can be better than Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford or some other moldy brick institution high on the U.S. News list. A few adventurous U.S. students are enrolling in Canadian and British schools, but nobody talks about that in the high school cafeteria or the PTA.

Our self-regard is, in some ways, justified. On most international ratings, one of the topics of Ben Wildavsky's intriguing new book "The Great Brain Race: How Global Universities Are Reshaping the World," U.S. colleges still dominate the top 10. But Wildavsky reveals that that will probably change. Students in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America are beginning to speak as knowledgeably about France's Ecole Polytechnique, the Indian Institutes of Technology and Britain's University of Leicester as they do about Columbia and Caltech. Many foreign universities are catching up with ours.

In our comfortable spot at the top of the world's higher ed pyramid, we are ignoring one of the most powerful trends of the 21st century -- a

Trolling the charters for 'master educators'

While some charter school officials are concerned that the lucrative new teachers contract will trigger an exodus of talent, DCPS is recruiting aggressively right now from its charter neighbors. That includes enlisting instructors to serve as so-called "master educators" to evaluate public school teachers under the new IMPACT system. DCPS plans to expand its corps of about three dozen master educators with 10 new hires.

Here's a recent pitch from program coordinator Kathy Choi to a teacher at KIPP DC: AIM Academy:

From: Choi, Kathy (DCPS-OOC) [Kathy.Choi@dc.gov]
Sent: Wednesday, April 21, 2010 1:23 PM
To:XXXXX
Subject: Interest in the DCPS Master Educator Position

Dear XXXXX,

I hope this message finds you well. My name is Kathy Choi, and I am one of the Program Coordinators for the Master Educator Program here

Matthew Zisi, 13, of Fredericksburg, celebrates Thursday on spelling a word correctly in the third round of the 2010 Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington (AP)