Diane Ravitch: Support Congressman Obey's Edujobs Bill

Diane Ravitch: Support Congressman Obey's Edujobs Bill

Diane Ravitch

Historian, NYU professor

Posted: July 1, 2010 01:38 PM

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Support Congressman Obey's Edujobs Bill

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Read More: Charter Schools , Education , Education Reform , Federal Budget Deficit , Rep. David Obey ,Politics News

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Congressman David Obey is trying to save the jobs of tens of thousands of public school teachers who have received pink slips. As chair of the House Appropriations Committee, he proposes to shift money from President Obama's "Race to the Top" program to keep teachers employed.

Specifically, the Obey plan would keep teachers working by diverting money that is now going to be spent on charter schools and merit pay.

The Obama plan is called "reform," but it really represents the wish list of the Republican Party, which has long supported charters, vouchers, and merit pay.

The Republicans and some of their allies in the Democratic party have raised an outcry against the Obey plan, claiming that it will "gut" what they call "reform" if money is taken away from privatization and merit pay.

	'Orphan Doctor' Calls on World Community to End Orphan Crisis by Tackling Poverty
	Jim Luce - 07/01/2010 02:59 PM
	Dr. Jane Aronson, founder and CEO of Worldwide Orphans Foundation (WWO), has issued a bold response today to a recent article on child trafficking. Jane, an internationally-renowned pediatrician and child advocate who I have profiled here, urges the U.S. and international community to take "aggress...
	Why the Tea Party Has No Poets
	Richard Geldard - 07/01/2010 02:39 PM
	It is a misnomer to call the Tea Party a protest movement. It's just a bumper sticker movement spawned in irrational anger but without coherent protest. Genuine protest over war, injustice, racism, bigotry, and crimes of all kinds, produces great protest poetry, the outpouring of inspired language c...
	Pat Quinn Signs Budget, Announces $1.4 Billion In Cuts To Schools, Human Services
	AP - 07/01/2010 01:48 PM
	CHICAGO — Gov. Pat Quinn said Thursday that's he's cutting government spending by $1.4 billion, with more cuts still possible, but offered few details about which services will be targeted. Quinn signed a new state budget into law, including provisions that give him broad authority to deal wi...
	On Its 50th Birthday, Why Is 'To Kill A Mockingbird' Being Attacked?
	Jesse Kornbluth - 07/01/2010 01:48 PM
	I never thought I'd see the day when the lawyer who argued Brown v. Topeka Board of Education before the Supreme Court and went on to be the first African-American to sit on that Court would have his career reduced to that most dreaded of all contemporary labels: "activist." I never thought I'd se...
	Support Congressman Obey's Edujobs Bill
	Diane Ravitch - 07/01/2010 01:38 PM
	Congressman David Obey is trying to save the jobs of tens of thousands of public school teachers who have received pink slips. As chair of the House Appropriations Committee, he proposes to shift money from President Obama's "Race to the Top" program to keep teachers employed. Specifically, the Obe...
	Weekly Diaspora: Obama to Congress: It's Time to Support Immigration Reform
	The Media Consortium - 07/01/2010 01:24 PM
	by Erin Rosa, Media Consortium blogger This morning, President Barack Obama condemned the "failure by those of us in Washington to fix a broken immigration system" and called on Congress to support reform this year. "This administration will not just kick the can down the road," Obama said. He also ...
	LAUSD: Green Schools Growing In California's Biggest District (VIDEO)
	Travis Walter Donovan - 07/01/2010 02:43 PM
	Los Angeles Unified School District is the second largest school district in the nation, and now they are working toward becoming the greenest. A year long effort to bring gardens to their mostly concrete and asphalt schools has taken the education of LAUSD students to a new level. By providing ...
	Send a message to Congress to prevent damaging increases in class size, now!
	Leonie Haimson - 07/01/2010 12:51 PM
	All over the country, school budgets are being slashed to the bone and teachers are being laid off, leading to sharp increases in class size next year. But we still have a chance to minimize these damaging effects on our schools. Representative Obey, head of the House Appropriations committee, ...

NorthJersey.com: New Jersey School Boards Association says tax cap should exclude special education fees

NorthJersey.com: New Jersey School Boards Association says tax cap should exclude special education fees

New Jersey School Boards Association says tax cap should exclude special education fees

Thursday, July 1, 2010

BY LESLIE BRODY

THE RECORD

STAFF WRITER

The New Jersey School Boards Association said Thursday that the proposed 2.5 percent cap on tax levy increases should exclude high, unpredictable fees for special education.
The group noted that when a student with severe special needs moves into a community, the district has little control over the expenses but faces a legal requirement to provide services, which can cost $100,000 for a child who needs a residential placement.
"Local school districts need a cap adjustment to enable them to contend with cost increases for these required services without having to diminish the general education program," said the association’s president, Marie S. Bilik.
The legislature is about to go into special session today to debate Governor Christie’s proposed constitutional amendment preventing municipalities and school districts from raising taxes more than 2.5 percent in any year. Christie’s cap could be exceeded only to cover towns’ debt payments or if 60 percent of local

Education Research Report: Grappling with the Gaps

Education Research Report: Grappling with the Gaps

Grappling with the Gaps Ω Grappling with the Gaps identifies current gaps in the research on the education of children and youth in the foster care system based on interviews with twelve nationally recognized experts in education and child welfare.

Ready to Succeed in the Classroom Ω Ready to Succeed in the Classroom brings forward the voices of experienced classroom teachers. In the fall of 2009, a team from the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning convened six discussion groups to explore how teachers work with ...

UC Davis professor given grant to heal soldiers with stem cells - Yolo County News - sacbee.com

UC Davis professor given grant to heal soldiers with stem cells - Yolo County News - sacbee.com

UC Davis professor given grant to heal soldiers with stem cells

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By Lulu Liu
lliu@sacbee.com

Published: Thursday, Jul. 1, 2010 - 12:00 pm

The US Army has granted UC Davis professor Kent Leach $100,000 for further study of an innovative new medical treatment poised to help injured combatants.

The proposed technique will regrow damaged tissue and bones using stem cells extracted from the patient's own fat.

A stem cell is an undifferentiated cell whose role in the body is yet to be determined. When placed at the site of an injury these cells may grow to replace the damaged part.

Yet, "straight injection of stem cells has a limited effect," Leach said in a press release. His method embeds cells in a gel-like material which will hold the treatment in place.

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/07/01/2863336/uc-davis-professor-given-grant.html#mi_rss=Education#ixzz0sSZwZC78

Steinberg's teachers bill survives its first test

By Dan Walters - Updated: 8:08 am

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg's bill to overhaul teacher layoffs and reassignments survived its first legislative test Wednesday despite the opposition of teacher unions.

Principal recruits students for Hmong charter school in Sacramento

By Deia de Brito - Published: 12:00 am

Registration for the first charter school in California to focus on Hmong culture starts today with a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Sac City Unified offers vaccinations for whooping cough, H1N1

By Melody Gutierrez - Published: Wednesday, June 30 2010 - 12:00 am

Sacramento City Unified School District Health Services is providing free whooping cough, H1N1 and other vaccinations to students, their parents and community members.

Chico nonprofit gives 400 Sacramento students free computers

By Melody Gutierrez - Published: Wednesday, June 30 2010 - 12:00 am

More than 400 needy students at Sacramento middle schools have received free computers as part of a study that is testing the educational benefits of having a computer at home.

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/education/#ixzz0sSaBjY1d

The Educated Guess � Charter advocates defeat restrictions

The Educated Guess � Charter advocates defeat restrictions

Charter advocates defeat restrictions

Posted in Charters

Charter schools’ lobby and friends have beaten back the latest effort to tighten financial and academic oversight of charter schools.
AB 1950 had easily passed the Assembly. But on Tuesday, the eve before her bill would have been heard – and likely voted down — in the charter-friendly Senate Education Committee, the bill’s sponsor, Democratic Assemblywoman Julia Brownley, withdrew it.
That will be it for imposing additional charter regulations for the session, unless Brownley and the California Charter School Assn. can cut a deal on new rules for closing poorly performing charter schools. Bill Lucia, CEO of EdVoice, an advocacy group that organized to kill AB 1950, said yesterday that he still hoped a compromise can be reached.

“Bad charters should be shut down,” he said, “ but not at a cost of stifling growth of the charter movement.”
California has dozens of excellent charters but also too many lousy ones whose test scores bring down the average for all. A half-dozen charter schools appeared

DFER Watch

DFER Watch

WELCOME TO DFER WATCH

Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) recently celebrated their third year of existence. Here’s how Executive Director Joe Williams summarizes their accomplishments to date:

• Direct more than $17 million into political and grassroots advocacy for education reform, creating momentum which has the potential to dominate education policymaking for years to come.
• Play a leading role in efforts to pass groundbreaking K-12 reform-centered legislation in multiple states, including New York, Colorado, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, and Florida.
• Lead efforts to frame the fight that is playing out within the Democratic Party on education issues. This successful framing has cleared the way for significant reform efforts stemming from the Obama administration, and filtering down into states across the map.
• Establish DFER outposts in Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin, Missouri, and Colorado. New outposts are in the process of forming in Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee, Oregon, Washington, California, and elsewhere. The effort to spread the reform blanket across as much of the map as possible is done in recognition of the reality that change must be pushed at all levels and all across the map in order to

School gets ‘potentially criminal’ threats after bogus Fox News report | Raw Story

School gets ‘potentially criminal’ threats after bogus Fox News report | Raw Story

School gets ‘potentially criminal’ threats after bogus Fox News report

By Muriel Kane
Thursday, July 1st, 2010 -- 1:30 pm

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Police in a Boston suburb are investigating threatening messages sent to members of the Arlington School Committee, following what school officials said were incorrect reports by Fox News that they had banned the Pledge of Allegiance in Arlington schools.

According to the Boston Globe, a police spokespersondescribed the messages as "offensive and hateful and potentially criminal" and said that some of them were anti-Semitic.

The Pledge hasn't been recited at Arlington High School in decades, although it is said voluntarily in the elementary and middle schools. When the school committee recently deadlocked on a student-led proposal to introduce a voluntary recitation in high school classes, Fox leaped on the controversy with a story headlined "School Officials in Mass. Town Won't Let Students Recite Pledge of Allegiance."

"It is unfortunate that the national media has chosen to distort this very serious debate in a manner which so badly misinforms the public," School Committee Chairman Joseph Curro stated in a press release. He told the Globe that the messages were coming from "all over the country." A few "included indirect threats and one said the members should go to North Korea, where their throats would be slit."

The controversy began when Arlington High School junior Sean Harrington presented the committee with a petition calling for the Pledge of Allegiance to be recited in every school. Harrington is an associate member of Arlington's Republican Town Committee and the founder

ASCD Inservice: The Missing Ink on the Common Core

ASCD Inservice: The Missing Ink on the Common Core

The Missing Ink on the Common Core

Why isn't state adoption of the Common Core getting more press? asks Linda Perlstein, public editor of the Education Writers Association.

"Standards are boring," is her conclusion, though she also surmises that the standards are "too removed" or won't really effect change.

Let me throw out another possibility: state departments of education aren't communicating adoption of the standards to reporters, much less the public.

ASCD has just posted a map to keep track of the states that have adopted the Common Core with a link to the official standards adoption announcement or decision. Compiling the links to official state education action on an issue of such national prominence as the Common Core has been an eye-opening experience. It has not been as easy as might have been expected.

Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Utah all issued press releases or provided some easily found statement confirming the state had adopted the common core.

But for other states, such information is hard to come by.

On June 16, the New Jersey State Board of Education adopted the Common Core according to this news account, but the only press release issued from the department on that date touted the receipt of $45 million in federal school turnaround grants.

The Hawaii State Board of Education has posted no announcement or press

Celebrating W.S. Merwin, New U.S. Poet Laureate | The Atlantic Wire

Celebrating W.S. Merwin, New U.S. Poet Laureate | The Atlantic Wire

Celebrating W.S. Merwin, New U.S. Poet Laureate

by Benjamin F. Carlson

Crowning a career filled with laurels, 82-year-old poet William Stanley Merwin has been named 17th Poet Laureaute of the United States. The weighty title, accompanied by a $35,000 stipend, is conferred by the Librarian of the U.S. Congress and carries few specified responsibilities. Literary commentators have responded to the pick with little surprise, given Merwin's eminence in the field, and are more focused on his relative isolation, his elliptical style, and his role within contemporary American poetry. Here's what they're saying:

• Very Un-D.C. Drew Bratcher of Washingtonian delves into Merwin's personal and aesthetic distance from D.C. Bratcher notes he's a "Zen Buddhist [who] lives in a rainforest in Hawaii," and says his delicate lyrics owe "more to Asian and Latin American poets, many of whose work Merwin has translated, than to Beltway favorites such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Robert Frost."

• Passionate About Nature Mike Melia of PBS's News Hour explains that Merwin "designed and built their house at the edge of a dormant volcano. He is an avid gardener and passionate environmentalist. His garden has grown into a sanctuary for a number of rare plants." He brings back a News Hour segment on Merwin with Jeffrey Brown that you can view on their page.

• A Quiet Poet of Mysterious, Musical Lines Patricia Cohen of the New York Times provides an excellent account of Merwin's life. She describes him as "reclusive," "extravagantly" handsome, and known for (in the words of fellow poet Dana