Thursday, November 4, 2010

McDonald's Hosts 'Nutrition' Workshop for Elementary-School Kids | Health | Change.org

McDonald's Hosts 'Nutrition' Workshop for Elementary-School Kids

by Brie Cadman

It might be a health-conscious parent's worst nightmare: McDonald's, home of the 740-calorie Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese, teaching their child about nutrition. But the nightmare is really happening. The fast-food giant recently hosted a workshop to teach six-graders from Stratford, CT about the benefits of eating vegetables and making healthy choices.

In McDonald's terms, that means something like this:

"I learned that McDonald's can be very healthy for you if you make the right choices. I usually have lots of

Is Innovation a Destination? � My Island View

Is Innovation a Destination?

by tomwhitby

Many years ago I attended an education Conference in upstate New York and saw, as I remember, a Keynote speaker who was a superintendent of an upstate district. He told the audience of an experience he had with a business owner in his region. The businessman told the superintendent that the students being graduated were not coming to him with the skills needed for his industry. He invited the superintendent to visit his plant and see the problem he faced matching the needed skills with the skills being taught. He then told the superintendent that he couldn’t even hire Lathe operators from the high school graduates.

The Superintendent visited the industrial arts teacher the next day, and asked if the proper use of the lathe was taught in his class. The superintendent even looked over the lathe that students used to do their work. It was an

Pondering the “Master’s Bump” � School Finance 101

Pondering the “Master’s Bump”

by schoolfinance101

Last month, I wrote a post titled “The Research Question that Wasn’t Asked,” in which I questioned whether many of us have overstated the connection between research on teachers with advanced degrees and compensation policies that link compensation to advanced degrees.

I pointed out in my post that:

Studies of the association between different levels of experience and the association between having a master’s degree or not and student achievement gains have never attempted to ask about the potential labor market consequences of stopping providing additional compensation for teachers choosing to further their education – even if only for personal interest – or stopping providing any guarantee that a teacher’s compensation will grow at a predictable rate over time throughout the teacher’s career.
Many, like Rotherham but even more so, NCTQ, present this as a “research given.” That clearly,

Democurmudgeon: Taxpayers just aren’t paying enough for Voucher and Charter schools. Pony Up!

Taxpayers just aren’t paying enough for Voucher and Charter schools. Pony Up!

by Democurmudgeon

This commentary from the Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog should tell you something about the rising cost of education, which will first and foremost, force parents to pay more money out of pocket just to keep their kids in school.
The Post-Election Education Landscape: Vouchers Up, WEAC Down by: Alan J. Borsuk
Let’s assume it’s good-bye to the 22,500-student cap on the voucher enrollment in Milwaukee. Will

Remainders: Where does John Boehner stand on education? | GothamSchools

Remainders: Where does John Boehner stand on education?

by Anna Phillips

A dispute between the city’s comptroller and the DOE could leave school buses uninsured. (City Hall)
State Senate Education Committee Chair Suzi Oppenheimer is likely to keep her seat. (Times Union)
Cuomo will probably have to cut education spending, but NY still has a lot in its favor. (Flypaper)
M.S. 223’s Ramon Gonzalez tries to combat the middle school score drop. (The Examiner)
Teachers aren’t resistant to change, but they are tired of non-stop change. (Flowers and Sausage)
Josh Dunn talks about NYC’s school closure plans and the grants it has to work with. (Education Next)
New House Speaker John Boehner cares about education, but his members don’t agree on much. (Time)
NY social studies teachers are worried about what the end of the state’s test means for them. (HuffPo)
Chicago’s teachers’ union wants a “community panel” to choose the next schools leaders. (Catalyst)
Will Diane Ravitch’s NYRB review of “Waiting for Superman” hurt the movie’s Oscar chances? (WaPo)
The NEA is waiting to see what kind of Republicans will get leadership spots. (EdWeek)

City receives $19.8 mill. for 11 schools it hopes to “transform”

by Maura Walz

The city will receive nearly $20 million in federal funds for the 11 city schools it hopes to “transform” with longer school days and experiments in teacher training.

The city has been expecting this money since April, when the federal government gave New York State $300 million to turn around the state’s “persistently lowest achieving” schools. A total of 34 of the schools on the state’s list are in New York City, and more city schools are expected to be added to the list when the state updates it in the coming weeks.

The Department of Education was eligible for $2 million for each of the schools on the state’s list, but this year the city chose to only apply for funds for 11 of them.

For these schools, the city chose the “transformation” model of school improvement, the least severe of four

The Canadian Press: AP Interview: US education secretary upbeat about agenda despite election blow

AP Interview: US education secretary upbeat about agenda despite election blow

By Angela Charlton (CP) – 1 hour ago

PARIS — The U.S. education secretary is hopeful that this week's Republican election victories won't derail ambitious school reforms, which he argues are crucial to keeping up in an ever-smarter global economy.

"We used to be at the top of the world" in education rankings, Arne Duncan told The Associated Press in Paris on Thursday. "People think we're still there, but we're not."

In an interview, he said the "absolutely unacceptable" U.S. high school dropout rate — a quarter of students drop out or don't finish on time — "produces the effect of a permanent recession" because of lost productivity.

Duncan says he's relieved the elections are over and is "very hopeful" that the new Congress will approve the funding he wants to turn around poor schools and encourage better teacher performance. "I have a good relationship with (incoming House Speaker) John Boehner, I've known Boehner for years, I look forward to continuing to work with him."

Duncan has been working with Democratic and Republican legislators for months on getting the Elementary and Secondary Education Act reauthorized, and said the bipartisan discussions have been a model of civility. "We're looking forward to reauthorizing and hopefully moving pretty quickly," he said, though gave no timeframe.

He was similarly upbeat though vague about the future of Race to the Top, a program of federa

Post-election breakdown: how union, charter backers fared | GothamSchools

Post-election breakdown: how union, charter backers fared

by Anna Phillips

A day after an election that saw most of the union-backed candidates win their races, New York City teachers union president Michael Mulgrew was still celebrating. “We had a very good night,” he told me.

In total, 157 of the 170 candidates the United Federation of Teachers supported were victorious on Tuesday, union officials said.

Mulgrew said he was pleased to see former City Councilman Tony Avella take Republican Frank Padavan’s seat in the State Senate. A month before the election, when polls showed Avella was down by over two dozen points, Mulgrew said he sent union members to campaign in northeast Queens. Avella, who also ran and lost in the city’s mayoral race last year, ended up with 53 percent of the vote.

“It was fun because everyone told us we wouldn’t win,” Mulgrew said.

Union-backed candidates lost in 13 races. Among them was Democratic Congressman Michael McMahon, who

Find your school’s new state rating | EdNewsColorado

Find your school’s new state rating

by Nancy Mitchell

State officials this week unveiled the ratings for 2,080 schools or programs under the Education Accountability Act of 2009. Only those ratings agreed upon by state and district officials have been released. Another 99 campuses are still being reviewed.

Ratings possible are Performance, Improvement, Priority Improvement and Turnaround. To learn more about the

Why Did the “4.7% of Blacks Voted” Myth Spread So Fast? � Student Activism

Why Did the “4.7% of Blacks Voted” Myth Spread So Fast?

by Angus Johnston

Tuesday evening, as the polls were closing in most of the country, a young black Milwaukeean named Andre Douglas tweeted that only 4.7% of blacks had voted in his home state. It’s still not quite clear where he got this incorrect information — my best guess is that he or someone he knew misread a report that only 4.7% of Wisconsin voters had been African American — but the stat spread like wildfire on Twitter that night, quickly losing its connection to Wisconsin and becoming a “fact” about the country as a whole.

The claim was greeted with skepticism by many, but the doubters were overwhelmed by the believers. The story was repeated so often that it — combined with the news that the US Senate would be losing its only black member — turned the term “African Americans” into a Twitter trending topic for much of Wednesday.

Why did this false claim, first made by a guy with fewer than three hundred followers, blow up so big? Three reasons, I think…

First, it couldn’t be easily debunked.

You might think that how many African Americans voted in this week’s election would be a fact you could

Controversial “Teach for America” Back on the Agenda for Seattle’s Schools | Seattle Education 2010

Controversial “Teach for America” Back on the Agenda for Seattle’s Schools

by seattleducation2010

Teach for America, Inc. was back on the agenda at last night’s Seattle Public School Board meeting.

The district already has an undated (draft? final?) contract between TFA, Inc. and Seattle Public Schools ready to be signed by TFA, Inc.’s Managing Director Janis Ortega and Seattle Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson.

Community input? Zero.

Public demand for short-term new college grads with only five weeks of training to teach in the district’s public schools? Zero.

Seattle Public Schools have laid off teachers two years in a row. There is no shortage of qualified teachers

The Answer Sheet - A School Survival Guide for Parents (And Everyone Else)

Has Ravitch hurt 'Superman’s' Oscar ambitions?

Millions of words have been written about Davis Guggenheim’s “Waiting for Superman” and the education policies it promotes, but now we have a new line of analysis about its impact: What are the chances that the education documentary could win an Academy Award?

In a piece on Movie Line’s Web site, editor S.T. VanAirsdale asked whether education historian Diane Ravitch’s scathing review of Superman in The New York Review of Books will effectively serve to derail the movie’s chances of nabbing an Oscar. The movie is beingheavily promoted, with the help of a $2 million grant that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation gave to market it worldwide.

In the tough review, which you can find here, Ravitch dissects the film

Sacramento mayor wants to talk about merging city, county - Sacramento City News - sacbee.com

Sacramento mayor wants to talk about merging city, county

By Ryan Lillis
rlillis@sacbee.com

Published: Thursday, Nov. 4, 2010 - 12:04 pm

Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson said today he'd like to spark a conversation about whether the city and county of Sacramento should consolidate.

After expressing relief that a ballot measure to create a city in the Arden Arcade failed, Johnson said there were "a lot of reasons (Arden Arcade) being part of the city of Sacramento would be a good thing." He did not provide specifics, but said he would elaborate next week.

He went on to say he'd like to talk about whether all unincorporated neighborhoods in the county should consolidate with the city.

Asked whether he had looked into the issue of

The Answer Sheet - Margaret Spellings: The last NCLB defender?

Margaret Spellings: The last NCLB defender?

These days it’s hard to find a strong supporter of No Child Left Behind.

Rep. John Kline, the Republican in line to take over the education committee in the House, thinks the law that ushered in a destructive era of high-stakes testing and phony accountability is a mess. He wants to rewrite it.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who has been a big supporter, has nevertheless labeled as "utopian" the 2014 deadline for all students to be proficient on science, math and reading tests.

Diane Ravitch, an education historian who initially supported NCLB, wrote a scathing critique of it in her bestselling book The Death and Life of the Great American School System.

Enter Margaret Spellings, former secretary of education and a key architect of No Child Left Behind. She now runs Margaret Spellings and Company, a public policy and strategic consulting firm.

In an interview with my colleague Jay Mathews, Spellings said that NCLB is “a good strong law” with “good strong deadlines.” It should stay on the

So Much Hype, So Little Mindfulness: The Practical Importance of Knowing the Logic of a Reform-Driven Policy � Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

So Much Hype, So Little Mindfulness: The Practical Importance of Knowing the Logic of a Reform-Driven Policy

by larrycuban

Image via Wikipedia

Getting behind the brand names of school reform is hard work. Few of us try. KIPP, Green Dot, Teach for America, and One Laptop Per Child are all reform brands. Some are untarnished, well known and admired. Others, well, have become shabby. Of course, buying brand-names is what consumers do daily as a mental short-cut, a way of short-circuiting homework on less well known products. The thinking is: Brand-name product=quality

Reform brand-names, however, go in and out of style swiftly–how many remember the “open classroom” or “Malcolm Baldrige Awards for Excellence in Performance?” There is even a more serious problem with reform labels like “small high schools,” “charter schools,” and “pay-4-performance.” The reform label often masks what the designers assumed when they came up with the idea. Few policymakers, parents, practitioners, for

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Black & Brown Politics in Chicago in the Post Harold Washing Era

Black & Brown Politics in Chicago in the Post Harold Washing Era

by Mike Klonsky

TODAY

Black & Brown Politics in Chicago in the Post Harold Washing Era

Event Details
Date:	Thursday, November 4, 2010
Time:	5:00pm – 8:00pm
Cost:	Museum Members $5, Non-Members $10
Schedule:	5:00-6:00pm Reception 6:00-8:00pm Panel Discussion

This dynamic panel of Chicago’s political voices of yesterday and today will embark upon the hotbed of political issues affecting our city. Chicago has garnered national attention with its bevy of political excitement. Moderated by WVON talk show host, Salim Muwakkil (who authored, “HAROLD: Photographs from the Harold Washington

Schools Matter: Duncan and RTTT in England; NSVF Copy, Too?

Duncan and RTTT in England; NSVF Copy, Too?

by Kenneth Libby

Duncan spent yesterday in England touring a school and visiting with his British counterpart, Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove. The Guardian interviewed the US Ed head last week. Here's a snippet from the summary:

Duncan will meet the education secretary Michael Gove and tour a London school on Wednesday. The coalition's controversial free schools are inspired by the US charter schools movement, which often demand longer hours from teachers and impose strict discipline on children.

He said: "I just have tremendous respect for the educational work and the leadership that I've seen coming from the UK and we're all working on the same issues and have the same challenges."

NYC Public School Parents: Nov. 10 NYC Education Reform Retrospective agenda

Nov. 10 NYC Education Reform Retrospective agenda

by Leonie Haimson

I got forwarded two different items from two different third parties, including an invitation and the agenda for the Gates-funded NYC Ed Reform retrospectiveconference next week (see below for the agenda).

The invitation claimed (once again) that “The list of invitees includes researchers, practitioners, state policy makers and other stakeholders, both inside and outside NYC.”

The only NYC public school parents who are allowed to attend this invitation-only event are the five borough appointees on the Panel for Education Policy, originally with the excuse that there was no room for any others. For more on this, see our blog here.

Yet they have now extended the RSVP date several times, and also the invitations to a wider group as too few on the original list of invitees apparently signed up. They are also apparently inviting some reporters but

Hechinger Report | Minnesota’s Kline and the future of federal education policy

Minnesota’s Kline and the future of federal education policy

by MinnPost

John Kline (MinnPost photo by Bill Kelley)

WASHINGTON — One day after taking what he called a “shellacking” at the hands of voters, President Barack Obama stood in the East Room of the White House looking for examples of issues where he’ll find common ground over the next two years.

Republicans will hold the House gavel in the 112^th session, beginning in January 2011, and came within a few seats of capturing the Senate as well. On balance, these new Republican arrivals are far more conservative than the Republicans they replaced or the Democrats they unseated.

“I think that there are some areas where it’s going to be very difficult for us to agree on,” President Obama said. These are, after all, lawmakers who campaigned hard against much of the health care reform, stimulus and

4LAKids - some of the news that doesn't fit: PUBLIC SCHOOL CHOICE 3.0: REFORM OR GIVEAWAY? – The Players, The Scorecard The imminent arrival of 'Superman'

PUBLIC SCHOOL CHOICE 3.0: REFORM OR GIVEAWAY? – The Players, The Scorecard + The imminent arrival of 'Superman'

THE HEADLINES:

San Pedro secondary school will NOT be part of school choice program
School district puts Wilson High up for grabs
More LAUSD schools up for reform: District says 43 campuses are eligible, including nine from Valley.

Irish Students Occupy Dept. of Finance, Police Brutality Ensues � occupy california

Irish Students Occupy Dept. of Finance, Police Brutality Ensues

By *

DUBLIN, Ireland – Yesterday, reportedly around 40,000 student protesters took to the streets in Dublin for a demonstration the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) sponsored.

from dublin indymedia:

News is coming in that upwards of thirty students have occupied the Department of Finance in the centre of Dublin with several hundred supporting them in the streets outside. Tens of thousands of students are demonstrating as part of the USI protests against plans to introduce fees, these students carrying

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