Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Special Ed Teacher Stalked, Harrassed By Right-Wing Creeps | The New Republic

Special Ed Teacher Stalked, Harrassed By Right-Wing Creeps

Jonathan Chait
November 16, 2010 | 9:25 am
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This is one of the most stomach-churning things I've ever seen. Right-wing pseudo-journalist James O'Keefe decided to do an expose on the teachers unions. So he sent one of his flunkies to a bar after a teachers' conference to buy drinks for a special education teacher named Alissa Ploshnick, and prompt her to dish about incompetent colleagues while secretly recording her. One of Ploshnick's stories was that a colleague of hers referred called a student a nigger" and was demoted but not fired. She was clearly outraged.

Guess what happened? O'Keefe released the recorded, and got Ploshnick suspended for using the n-word. Yes -- the teacher who, in what she thought was a private setting,

The Big Education Ape Daily

The Big Education Ape Daily

Wednesday churn: Succession plan needed

parents4democraticschools.wordpress.com - Wednesday churn: Succession plan needed | EdNewsColorado.by EdNews staffWhat’s churning: Got your succession plan in place? A report by the University of Washington’s Center on Reinventing Public E...

coopmike48

Big Education Ape: The Answer Sheet

bigeducationape.blogspot.com - This was written by L. Martha Infante, a National Board Certified Social Studies teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District and veteran of 15 years. It first appeared on the Accomplished Ca...

coopmike48

Big Education Ape: Schools Matter: "Clinically-Based Teacher Preparation"

bigeducationape.blogspot.com - If there is a phrase that you are likely to get as sick of hearing in the next few years as you did "scientifically-based evidence" during the last few, it is likely to be "clinically based teacher...

coopmike48

Big Education Ape: UCSC students protest proposed fee hikes

bigeducationape.blogspot.com - SANTA CRUZ -- About 150 UC Santa Cruz students rallied today to protest a proposed 8 percent fee increase.The noon rally coincided with the beginning of a meeting in San Francisco, where the UC reg...

coopmike48

Frederick M. Hess « Parents 4 democratic Schools

parents4democraticschools.wordpress.com - by Frederick M. Hess • Nov 17, 2010 at 9:29 amCross-posted from Education WeekI’ve gotten a number of questions and comments regardingNCATE’s big Blue Ribbon Panel report, both after my remarks a...

School board violated open meeting law - The Boston Globe

School board violated open meeting law

Associated Press / November 17, 2010

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A judge has ruled that the School Committee in Barrington violated the state’s Open Meetings Act by failing to properly advertise a meeting last year on a mandatory alchohol monitoring policy. Superior Court Judge Brian Stern ruled Monday that the committee failed to alert the public about the specific policies it would be discussing. He said he would hold another hearing

University of California Regents to Take Up Fee Hikes Amid Protests « Student Activism

University of California Regents to Take Up Fee Hikes

by Angus Johnston

It’s seven o’clock in the morning in California, and the November meeting of the UC regents is scheduled to get underway soon. Topping their agenda is another steep tuition increase.

When the regents met last fall at UCLA some three thousand students were on hand to protest their imposition of a 32% fee hike, but at least some student activists expect a smaller turnout this time around. Ricardo Gomez, External Affairs Vice President of the Associated Students of the University of California, told the Daily Cal this week that the meeting’s staging at UC San Francisco Mission Bay — a medical center and teaching hospital with no undergraduate student body — is likely to suppress student turnout.

NYC Public School Parents: Cathie Black's deadly Coca Cola connection

Cathie Black's deadly Coca Cola connection

by Leonie Haimson

More questions arise as to the suitability of Cathie Black as the next schools Chancellor of NYC. As a member of Coca Cola's board, she had direct knowledge of the aggressive role of Coke company in contributing to childhood obesity in the US and abroad, and to death squads who targeted labor organizers in

More news coverage of Cathie Black controversy, in Spanish

by Leonie Haimson

See channel 41's coverage of last night's PEP meeting and the Cathie Black controversy.

Queens Teacher: "I Will Be the Next Chancellor" - Cathie Black

"I Will Be the Next Chancellor" - Cathie Black

by Queens Teacher

New Public Schools Chancellor Cathie Black fends off critics, says she has the experience
BY Meredith Kolodner

Bloomberg's choice for schools chancellor brushed off her growing chorus of critics Tuesday and defended her qualifications for the job.

"The mayor's been very clear that he really wanted a strong, effective manager, and I have almost 40 years of experience at that," Cathie Black told New York 1 after meeting with high-ranking Education Department officials.

She also said efforts to block her appointment would be unsuccessful.

"I will be the next chancellor," she said.

Still, parents angry about Black's surprise appointment made their voices heard at last night's education policy board meeting.

Bloomberg's Black Eye

by Queens Teacher

Bloomberg’s Black Eye
The mayor picks another noneducator to run the city’s schools.
Sol Stern

As the news circulated around New York City last week that Joel Klein was resigning as schools chancellor and would be replaced by Hearst Magazines executive Cathleen Black, I was deluged with e-mails from friends and colleagues. All expressed surprise at Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s pick of the unknown Black: “Cathie who?” “Is Bloomberg serious?” The public reaction was best summarized by a New York Daily News front-page headline the morning after Bloomberg’s announcement: the single word HUH? in large type, followed by a subhead alluding to Black’s lack of education experience. By the end of the week, even New York Times reporters were poking fun at Bloomberg’s claim that his selection of Black was the result of a careful search for the best available candidate.

In truth, there’s no reason for anyone to be surprised by anything the mayor does on education policy, certainly not those influential New Yorkers who pressed the state legislature last year to reauthorize mayoral control of the schools entirely on Bloomberg’s terms. Backed by his allies in the media and business communities, Bloomberg laid down a take-it-or-leave-it challenge to the Albany legislators. It went something like this: With my superior understanding of business management, I am indispensable to continued progress in the schools. So forget about those outdated principles of checks and balances. They may apply to the national government, but I

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Wednesday, November 17, 2010