Sunday, January 30, 2011

Charter schools not the answer | The Asbury Park Press | APP.com

Charter schools not the answer

Focus should be on helping low-income households

Jan 30, 2011 |
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It is well known that many New Jersey schools are failing. They suffer high dropout rates and have many students who cannot read or do math at grade level.

Criticizing our schools this way is far too easy, however; it is like taking candy from the young children of New Jersey.

Yet this is essentially what Gov. Chris Christie did recently when he announced 23 new charter schools for the state. To support his decision, he cited a New Jersey Department of Higher Education study comparing charter schools to all schools in the same district.

The study, "Living Up to Expectations," showed that out of 40 charter

Denver Public Schools testing system to give teachers in-class evaluations and feedback - The Denver Post

Denver Public Schools testing system to give teachers in-class evaluations and feedback

By Yesenia Robles
The Denver Post

POSTED: 01/30/2011 01:00:00 AM MST

An effective teacher will ask students to explain their answers whether they are right or wrong. Effective teachers also wait about 3 to 5 seconds for students to respond, but will give more time to students who are English language learners.

Those are part of the specifics outlined in a 28-page rubric that will be used to evaluate teacher effectiveness at Denver Public Schools using a new framework two years in the making. A pilot version of the framework, called Leading Effective Academic Practice, or LEAP, has been sent out for testing in 16 DPS schools this month.

Read more:Denver Public Schools testing system to give teachers in-class evaluations and feedback - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_17240126#ixzz1CWxeDlNh
Read The Denver Post's Terms of Use of its content: http://www.denverpost.com/termsofuse

On Michelle Obama, Fashion, and the First Lady Role - Dana Goldstein

On Michelle Obama, Fashion, and the First Lady Role

by Dana Goldstein

Michelle Obama, wearing Alexander McQueen, with American designer Oscar de la Renta, who disapproved of this dress.

I'm not gonna pretend I don't love seeing and commenting on what Michelle Obama wears. I do. She's gorgeous and stylish and with her embrace of bare legs in the summer and sweaters instead of suit jackets, she has helped my generation of young professional women win some perennial fashion arguments with our mothers. No, you don't have to dress like a man at work!

Kate Betts makes all those points in her Times op-ed about the controversy surrounding Obama's choice of a gown by a non-American designer, the late Alexander McQueen, for the state dinner honoring Chinese President

New A.P. Biology Is Ready, but U.S. History Isn’t - NYTimes.com

New Advanced Placement Biology Is Ready to Roll Out, but U.S. History Isn’t

By CHRISTOPHER DREW

Published: January 29, 2011

REPRINTS

While the College Board plans to unveil a sweeping revision to Advanced Placement biology courses on Tuesday, it is delaying similar changes in United States history by a year to address concerns from high school teachers.

The changes in both subjects are part of a broad revamping of A.P. courses and exams to reduce memorization and to foster analytic thinking. But while the new biology curriculum is specific about what material needs to be covered, some teachers complained that parts of the history course seemed vague, and the board said it needed more time to clarify what should be studied.

Board officials said they expected to publish the new United States history curriculum next

Modern School: Sarah Palin: Proof That K-12 Education is in Crisis

Sarah Palin: Proof That K-12 Education is in Crisis In his state of the union address, Obama called this our Sputnik moment, referring to the massive infusion of federal funds into math and science education following the launch of Sputnik so that we could humiliate the USSR in the race to the moon. ...

Few High School Biology Teachers Accurately Teach Evolution I hate to bag on my own colleagues, but the evidence is overwhelming: most high school biology teachers either do not teach evolution or undermine their own teaching by giving nods and winks to creationist ideas. (See *Most high school biology ...

Del Valle for Mayor | For All Chicago For Every Neighborhood: Boricuas for del Valle

Boricuas for del Valle

by Joanna2011

Dear friends, leaders and allies of the Puerto Rican/Latino Community,

We enthusiastically invite you to join us at a community press conference on Monday, January 31, 2011 at 10am at the Teresa Roldan Apartments on Paseo Boricua located on 1154 N. Campbell (Division and Campbell) to support our good friend and current City Clerk Miguel del Valle for Mayor of Chicago.

Miguel is one of ours, Miguel grew up in our neighborhood and dedicated 20 years of service in the State Senate ensuring that the issues that impacted our community were addressed. He brought back much needed resources for our community institutions to build itself from the bottom up. He in essence embodies what a public servant should be. He was and continues to be our voice, AN HONEST VOICE for the people.

The leadership of the Puerto Rican community in Chicago knows first-hand that del Valle is a leader that can address important issues affecting the city and be a mayor for all people. “Boricuas for del Valle” is a group of leaders representing different sectors of the Puerto Rican community such as education, philanthropy, health,

January’s Best Posts | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

January’s Best Posts I regularly highlight my picks for the most useful posts for each month — not including “The Best…” lists. I also use some of them in a more extensive monthly newsletter I send-out. You can see back issues of those newsletters here and my previous ...

The World As 100 People — Using Legos I’ve previously posted a pretty neat “The Best…” list titled The Best Sites That Show Statistics By Reducing The World & The U.S. To 100 People. Now, thanks to David Deubelbeiss, I’m adding an intriguing and strange link to that list. It’s a site ...

“The Salt Hiding In Your Diet” The Salt Hiding in Your Diet is an interactive from the Wall Street Journal that shows…where you wouldn’t think you’d find salt in your diet. I’m adding the link to The Best Sites For Learning About Nutrition & Food Safety.

“The Children Must Play” The Children Must Play: What the United States could learn from Finland about education reform is a very good article in The New Republic. I’m adding the link to The Best Resources To Learn About Finland’s Education System.

Email Newsletter Sent-Out As regular readers know, I send-out a free monthly email newsletter. The February edition has just been sent. You can easily subscribe to it here.

“10 Fascinating Facts About E-mail” “10 Fascinating Facts About E-mail” is a surprisingly interesting post from Mashable. I’m adding the link to The Best Sites To Learn About The Internet.

Google Search Stories I know I’m very “late to the party” on this one, but I didn’t really pay attention to Google Search Stories last year when it came out. Now, however, with YouTube being partially unblocked by our district, I figured it was worth another look. Boy, ...

Transactional vs. Transformational Parent Engagement I briefly look at the difference between “transactional” and “transformational” parent involvement/engagement in a post at my other, Engaging Parents In School. I look at it through the lens of the Chicago mayoral race. You might want to check-out ...

Rahm Emanuel’s “Transactional” Perspective On Parent Involvement/Engagement | Engaging Parents In School...

Engaging Parents In School... (4)

Rahm Emanuel’s “Transactional” Perspective On Parent Involvement/Engagement As most readers know, Rahm Emanuel is favored to become the next Mayor of Chicago, where there is mayoral control of public schools. In his response to the question “Please explain how you would encourage more parental involvement in the public ...

Surprisingly Good LA Times Editorial On Parent “Trigger” The Los Angeles Times just published a surprising good editorial critical of the parent trigger law. Here’s one line I especially like: *Parent trigger must not become a means for private charter groups to get free school buildings through secret ...

Latino Parents Organize In Oregon Latino parents’ efforts to cultivate empowerment and inclusion are paying off on multiple levels in Forest Grove schools is a nice article in The Oregonian newspaper. It describes one school where parents are taking leadership, and it appears to be ...

4LAKids - some of the news that doesn't fit: FIRST-HAND REPORT FROM THE HS#13/TAYLOR YARDS PSC ELECTION

FIRST-HAND REPORT FROM THE HS#13/TAYLOR YARDS PSC ELECTION

BY SMF FOR 4LAKIDSNEWS

School buses from across the city (Downtown, the San Fernando Valley) are busing in charter school parents - with instructions on how to vote taped to the window: for one (PUC School) of the two charter schools and four Pilot on the High School #13 Public School Choice ballot. There are only five small schools, one will get left out!

The bused-in-parents – often accompanied by children - are off loaded, lined up and shepherded by charter folks and school district staff into the polling place, often with their instructions in hand. The buses refill with the recently-voted and go back for another load. The League of Women Voters election monitor says it’s OK because the rules for who can vote based on where they live was changed/clarified on Thursday. The first day of voting was Monday!

“We just keep voting”, the character played by Edward G. Robinson says to the character played by Humphrey Bogart in ‘Key Largo’, “until we get the results we

Seattle Public Schools community blog: Teachers and RIFS

Principals Contract Flying under the radar, we finally have a 3-year principals contract that has been approved by PASS, the principals' representative group. It needs to be approved by the Board at Wednesday's School Board meeting. I attended a meeting where Director ...

Teachers and RIFS Here we go. Is it inevitable that we will be RIFing teachers? Good question. In SPS, maybe. In other districts, probably. In this morning's Seattle Times is a story about Rep. Rodney Tom who is sponsoring a bill that would make teacher effectiveness ...

Achievement/Opportunity Gap Recommendations In 2009 the State formed the Achievement Gap Oversight and Accountability Committee to synthesize the findings and recommendations from the 2008 achievement gap studies. You can read their report and review their recommendations for yourself. You will ...

School Tech Connect: Joel Klein Is Misinformed

Joel Klein Is Misinformed

by effacethefacade@yahoo.com (Tim)

What an astonishing lie by Joel Klein, who has taken to bashing U.S. teachers overseas.

Joel Klein is a liar and an unethical person in general. He is also misinformed. On those rare occasions when I indulge someone on a tenure discussion here in Illinois, the person I am talking to has utterly no idea how due process works, what the steps are, and how it's written in law. People have all kinds of idea about what "tenure" is, none of them based in reality.

In general, when a principal thinks that a "tenured" teacher is not meeting doing well enough, he has to have the balls to tell the teacher in writing what's wrong and develop a plan to improve, with benchmarks and a timeline. I have only worked with a couple principals who didn't have the capability to manage these tasks; all of the others were completely in charge of teacher remediation.

In my time, I've served as a local president and a principal. As a local president, the first thing I had to do was

The Twenty-First Edition of the ESL/EFL/ELD Blog Carnival | Reflections on Teaching

The Twenty-First Edition of the ESL/EFL/ELD Blog Carnival

by alicemercer

Welcome to the 21st edition of the ESL/EFL/ELD Blog Carnival! This one is full of celebratory goodness, and I promise there will be none of the nasty hangovers that plague some other celebration for getting up to 21.

Let’s start of with a nice base of lessons and resources for you to deploy in your classroom…

The Best Sites For Collaborative Storytelling | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

Reminding us why many

NYC Public School Parents: Leaked DOE memo: "Everyone is not alike"

Leaked DOE memo: "Everyone is not alike"

by Leonie Haimson

One of the many unproven large-scale experiments on NYC kids is the rapid move towards more CTT (inclusion) classes for special needs children who were formerly in more small scale settings. The push towards CTT often happens regardless of the student’s Individualized Education Plan (IEP).

The leaked memo Rachel Monahan disclosed yesterday in the Daily News revealed a high number of special education students suspended in the Bronx, many of them emotionally disturbed, many of them from the new small high schools. These findings are in line with the NYCLU report, showing a sharp rise in suspensions under Bloomberg and Klein, with fully one third of those suspended special education students.

The leaked memo further points out that many of these students were placed in inclusion classes in the Bronx in small schools. These small schools by and large do not

media advisory for Parents Across America Feb. 7 education forum with Diane Ravitch

by Leonie Haimson

MEDIA ADVISORY

CONTACT:

Julie Woestehoff

pure@pureparents.org

773-715-3989

Leonie Haimson

classsizematters@gmail.com

917-435-9329

New national organization, Parents Across America,

launches with inaugural education forum in NYC

featuring Diane Ravitch

NEW YORK, Jan. 24, 2011 – Diane Ravitch, a national authority on education policy, will be the keynote speaker at the kickoff event for Parents Across America (PAA), a new national public education advocacy organization, on Monday Feb. 7 in NYC. Ravitch will address the topic: “Are our schools going in the right direction? What parents should do.”

This public forum will be held at 6 p.m. at PS/IS 89 in Lower Manhattan, 201 Warren St. Sponsors include:Parents Across America, Class Size Matters, Community Board 1 and the PS/IS 89 PTA.

WHAT: Forum and discussion on public education featuring Diane Ravitch and a panel of parent activists from around the nation.

WHEN: Monday, Feb.7 at 6 p.m. Admission free. Reservations are required and can be made online at:http://bit.ly/h0Adv1

WHERE: PS/IS 89 – Liberty School, 201 Warren Street (Lower Manhattan), New York, N.Y. 10282. (Map here.Directions: take the A, C, E, 1, 2, 3 to Chambers; or the N, R, 4,5,6 to City Hall.).

WHY: This forum represents the first effort by a national grassroots parent organization to present their vision of positive progressive education reform –- a perspective PAA believes has been so far ignored in the national debate on education –- and what’s wrong with the current policies being imposed on our schools.

The evening will feature a talk by Dr. Ravitch, followed by comments from PAA panelists and a Q&A session with the audience. The PAA panelists will include: Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters, Karran Royal Harper of the Pyramid Community Parent Resource Center and an education advocate in New Orleans, Rita Solnet ofTesting is not Teaching in Florida, and Sue Peters of Seattle Education 2010. Other parent leaders participating will include Julie Woestehoff of Parents United for Responsible Education (PURE) in Chicago, Dora Taylor ofSeattle Education 2010, Caroline Grannan of San Francisco, Andrea Mérida, Denver school board member and a founding member of Democrats for Excellent Neighborhood School Education, Pamela Grundy, a parent activist from North Carolina, Sharon Higgins of Oakland, whose blogs include The Broad Report and Charter School Scandals, and Mark Mishler from Albany, N.Y.

Diane Ravitch is Research Professor of Education at New York University, an education historian and author of many books, including the bestselling "The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education" (2010). She was recently awarded the Daniel Moynihan Prize by the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and the Charles Eliot Award from the New EnglandAssociation of Schools & Colleges. From 1991-93, she was Assistant Secretary of Education and Counselor to Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander in the administration of President George H. W. Bush. From 1997- 2004, she was a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the federal testing program.

Parents Across America (PAA) is a new grassroots organization comprised of parent leaders throughout the nation who are advocating for positive and progressive educational reforms. Founding members hail from New York (Albany, NYC), California (Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland), Florida (Boca Raton), Texas (Houston), North Carolina (Charlotte, Durham), Illinois (Chicago), Louisiana (New Orleans), and Washington State (Seattle).

PAA supports reforms that work, focused on strengthening public schools rather than closing them, providing smaller classes, increasing parent involvement, and a well-rounded curriculum, rather than the current policies of privatization and punitive test-based accountability. PAA believes that parent voices must be heard in the national dialogue on public education.

Visit: www.parentsacrossamerica.org

& the PAA Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=123352677681840&ref=ts

Our children, our schools, our voices.

Saturday coffee. « Fred Klonsky's blog

Saturday coffee.

by Fred Klonsky

If there are such things as the dog days of winter, we are in them.

The excitement of the NFC conference game is now gone and only a few of my Packer and Steeler friends give a damn about next weekend.

Every day is gray and cold. Even today when we might get near 40 degrees, there will be no sun. The snow

Old school.

by Fred Klonsky

Buck Owens.

What’s wrong with standardized tests? | Seattle Education 2010

What’s wrong with standardized tests?

by seattleducation2010

Julie Woestehoff, who is Executive Director of PURE, developed this fact sheet regarding standardized testing which will be published on the Parents Across America website.

I wanted to share it with you now.

Dora

What’s wrong with standardized tests?

They are designed to rank and sort children. Many use a scoring system in which half of all children in the nation always score below average.
There is a well-known achievement gap between the test scores of white and Asian students and African-American and Latino students. Rather than help all children achieve, this overemphasis on

solidaridad: Banana Republic PSC Elections Camino Nuevo Corporate Charter Style

Banana Republic PSC Elections Camino Nuevo Corporate Charter Style

by Robert D. Skeels * rdsathene

"We need to say no to the neoliberal fatalism that we are witnessing at the end of this century, informed by the ethics of the market, an ethics in which a minority makes most profits against the lives of the majority. In other words, those who cannot compete, die. This is a perverse ethics that, in fact, lacks ethics. I insist on saying that I continue to be human...I would then remain the last educator in the world to say no: I do not accept...history as determinism. I embrace history as possibility [where] we can demystify the evil in the perverse fatalism that characterizes the neoliberal discourse in the end of this century." — Paulo Freire and Donaldo Macedo, "Ideology Matters"

When democratically elected community members, parents, and teachers comprise the board of directors for a school, then we can begin to speak of social justice.

How do you subvert democracy?

Start by stuffing the ballot box. Burgeoning Corporate Charter Voucher Empire Camino Nuevo

Some Things To Share | Mr. Teachbad's Blog of Teacher Disgruntlement

Some Things To Share

by mrteachbad

A while ago I set up a sister blog called American Teaching Stories. This is where people can write something about teaching and get it up somewhere. At first, not many people were writing. Then I just started to ignore it. Now, more stuff is coming in. Much of it is thoughtful, provocative and should be shared.

So, this is sort of an official re-launch of American Teaching Stories. On this blog you will find stories that move you to laughter, tears and anger. Maybe other things as well (jealousy, hatred, indifference, despair, melancholy, maybe you’ll become a “cutter”, etc., I don’t know), but I think we have the basics covered with laughter, tears and anger.

I have three pieces that I would like to share with you. When you click on the links, you will be directed to American Teaching Stories. Do not be alarmed.

If you have something you would like to submit, send it to mr.teachbad@gmail.com. Please put “stories” in the

Daily Kos: Save Our Schools March - who we are, part 1.

Save Our Schools March - who we are, part 1.

by teacherken

Last Sunday, January 23, I introduced you to Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action, where I told you that

For the future of our children,
we demand the following . . .

* Equitable funding for all public school communities

* An end to high stakes testing for student, teacher, and school evaluation

* Teacher and community leadership in forming public education policies

and that the date of the event was July 28-31, 2011.

Starting today, I will begin to introduce you to some of the key people organizing the event, and explain why we are committing our time and energy to this important effort to save our schools.

Today I would like you to meet Katherine Cox.

Insert Transformative Practices Here. « Chalkdust101

Insert Transformative Practices Here.

by pjhiggins

Consider this a fact-finding mission.

Here’s some context: I am new to the district I work in, meaning I just started here in July. I was hired to come in and supervise three departments, three departments that had not been supervised (in the traditional sense–whatever that is–) before. Curriculum had been looked at, but a group effort to make it flow from K-12 hadn’t been attempted.

In New Jersey schools are grouped according to something called a District Factor Group, which is a value consisting of wealth components and educational levels of the residents taken from the most recent census data. The group we belong to is very close to the highest (on and scale that rates them A-J with A being the lowest, we aren I). The top two socio-economic levels usually comprise most of the top performing schools within the state. Withing that group, we rank near the bottom in most of the measurables society uses to gauge

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Parents Should Take Advantage of Critical Window for Children’s Health Insurance | California Progress Report

Parents Should Take Advantage of Critical Window for Children’s Health Insurance

Posted on 29 January 2011

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Assemblymember Mike Feuer:

SACRAMENTO – In this Democratic weekly address, Assemblymember Mike Feuer (D-Los Angeles), Assembly Majority Policy Leader and Chair of the Assembly Judiciary Committee, highlights a critical open-enrollment period for kids’ health insurance that began on January 1, 2011 and ends on March 1. As a result of President Obama’s federal health care reform plan and a new state law Feuer authored, insurers can no longer deny coverage to children, whether they are sick or healthy, but it’s important that parents sign their kids up for health insurance during this initial open enrollment period or coverage for their kids could be significantly more expensive.

Click onto the following link for the

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