Public Policy Blogger: Are we entering an age of "acceptable" segregation? Is this good for children or society?

Public Policy Blogger: Are we entering an age of "acceptable" segregation? Is this good for children or society?

Are we entering an age of "acceptable" segregation? Is this good for children or society?

by Anne Geiger

I've joined others in raising concerns about the disappointing actions of the tea-party backed Wake County (N.C.) school board. They are dismantling a longstanding, respected and successful diversity plan. Using deceptive rationalizations like "neighborhood schools are better for children and families," policy makers like these wink-wink at segregated schools (perhaps not blatant "de jure segregation, but "de facto" segregation nonetheless. In Student Voices, a recent post asks this important question, "Race in Schools: When does learning support become segregation?" It links to the CNN story, "Pennsylvania Schools Experiment with "Segregation."

It's worth mentioning, too, in a general sense, how our current education reform movement leans too heavily on

Del Valle for Mayor | For All Chicago For Every Neighborhood: How Miguel del Valle Snagged the Spotlight--NBC5 Ward Room

Del Valle for Mayor | For All Chicago For Every Neighborhood: How Miguel del Valle Snagged the Spotlight--NBC5 Ward Room

How Miguel del Valle Snagged the Spotlight--NBC5 Ward Room

by Joanna2011

From NBC5 Chicago Ward Room, 1.31.2011

Miguel del Valle had a briefing book for last Thursday’s WGN debate, but he set it on the floor and decided to “just talk about what I was feeling people are talking about instead.”

When the candidates were asked about the city’s revenue collection, del Valle busted out with a rant that connected with every Chicagoan who’s ever gotten a $100 ticket for making a rolling right turn on red.

“There’s been an oppressive climate created in the city of Chicago, the result of all these fees and tickets and red-light cameras and the parking meter deal,” del Valle burst out near the beginning of the debate. “We give people the boot for two tickets. Two tickets. It means that they can’t get to work sometimes, it creates hardship for families. We want to collect our revenue. But it’s time to be sensitive to what’s happening out in the neighborhoods in the city of Chicago.”

And just like that, the fourth-place candidate in the race, the man who’s only raised $110,000 and never polled higher than single digits, started getting some attention. The “phone started ringing off the hook” at campaign

No to Senate Bill 5399 | Seattle Education 2010

No to Senate Bill 5399 | Seattle Education 2010

No to Senate Bill 5399

by seattleducation2010

Senate Bill 5399 proposes that when there are teacher layoffs, referred to as rif’s (reductions in force), that teachers should be laid off, fired basically, based on the performance of their students.

There is a four-tiered teacher evaluation system that the teacher’s union in Seattle, the Seattle Education Association (SEA) as part of WEA, the Washington Education Association, the superintendent of our schools in Seattle, Dr. Goodloe-Johnson and Randy Dorn, the Superintendent of Education for the state of Washington, have agreed to. This system is going through a two-year pilot program to ensure that this evaluation system works and is fair to all parties, including our children.

In the meantime, a bill was introduced by a Representative in the House and a Senator in the Senate last week that would circumvent the agreement that has been put into place by the teachers and Randy Dorn.

The bill proposed is in anticipation of layoff’s that might take place this year and next due to even tighter budget

Evaluating School Climate — Whole Child Education

Home — Whole Child Education

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  Evaluating School Climate

  January 28, 2011 by Healthy School Communities

  Healthy School Communities takes a look at evaluating social and emotional climate in schools as part of No Name-Calling Week.

  Read more »

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  Active Gaming in Physical Education: Embracing the Future

  January 28, 2011 by ASCD Whole Child Bloggers

  Guest blogger Lisa Hansen shares how using active gaming can engage students in enjoyable, healthy physical activity. Have you tried active gaming with your students?

  Read more »

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  Ignorance or Arrogance: Depriving Children of Physical Activity in School

  January 26, 2011 by ASCD Whole Child Bloggers

  Guest blogger Steve Jefferies takes a look at the effects of not providing children the opportunity for physical activity in school. Are we ignorant of the developmental needs of children or are we arrogant and think we know better than the experts?

  Read more »

Secretary Duncan on Supporting Teachers, Improving Teacher Evaluation, and Providing a Well-Rounded Education – ED.gov Blog

Secretary Duncan on Supporting Teachers, Improving Teacher Evaluation, and Providing a Well-Rounded Education – ED.gov Blog

Secretary Duncan on Supporting Teachers, Improving Teacher Evaluation, and Providing a Well-Rounded Education

“We have to listen to teachers,” Secretary Duncan explains in this January 13, 2011, video response to questions asked through his Facebook page. He emphasized the need to respect teachers and give them “the support and professional development they need.”

Duncan also discussed the need to improve teacher evaluation and to provide students with a well-rounded education.

Click here for an accessible version of the video.

More on the Easley Recall « Failing Schools

More on the Easley Recall « Failing Schools

More on the Easley Recall

JANUARY 31, 2011

by Sabrina

This past week was an important one for community members backing the movement to recall DPS Board President Nate Easley. The recall petition was approved last Wednesday, and this past weekend volunteer petition gatherers began canvassing to collect the first of the 5,363 signatures that will be necessary to put a recall question on the November ballot.

Before gathering signatures, community members spoke about why they believe a recall is necessary:

AM News: Debating The Expo, Lane Gets Gifted - District 299: Chicago Public Schools Blog

AM News: Debating The Expo, Lane Gets Gifted - District 299: Chicago Public Schools Blog

AM News: Debating The Expo, Lane Gets Gifted

by Alexander Russo

Parents Debate Future of CPS Fox: The future of the Chicago Public Schools was open for debate during a Town Hall forum at the Fourth Annual New Schools Expo at Soldier Field on Saturday... Parents explore options at New Schools Expo ABC7: "Charter schools are Chicago Public Schools, contract schools. They are all open to the public, they all receive CPS money, so we just see this as an option ... Lane Tech may open to gifted 7th graders: Chicago Tribune: To get early admission to a selective enrollment high school, one of the most challenging academic programs within the Chicago Public Schools system...Murders up, Culture of Calm funding drying up Catalyst: Last year the number of murders in Chicago declined by 5 percent, but there's a disturbing side to that good news: 11 percent more teenagers were killed and about the same number were shot and injured as in 2009, according to statistics from the Chicago Police Department... Special educatoin backlog grows Catalyst: The issue came to a head last summer, after a school year when special education referrals for young children increased by 42 percent, putting further strain on a system that was already short-staffed. The district is faced with a backlog of up to 1,500 students...

Mayoral candidates clash on ethics, taxes at Tribune debate: After a financial meltdown and nine years under the control of the state of Illinois, a small northwest suburban school district is about to begin fending for itself again. The fiscal turnaround is significant. The district was on the verge of dissolving... Police, firefighters would pay more pension costs under Daley administration proposal Cout Street: Posted by John Byrne at 2:18 p.m. Mayor Richard Daley's administration today unveiled a plan for police and fire pension reform that would increase employee contributions as part of a package it hopes would save Chicago property taxpayers $240 million... Math and Science Academy chief lauds schools foundation: The president of the state's most prestigious publicly funded school for gifted Illinois students disputed the notion that there is no "silver bullet" in education Saturday night... A Debate Worthy Of the Student Council CNC: Early in Thursday's Chicago mayoral debate, the former United States senator Carol Moseley Braun was asked if she had a question for one of her three rivals.... No more kids playing at the fire hydrant in West Town Reporter: When I moved into my place in West Town nine years ago, there were kids everywhere. The local grade school - Ellen Mitchell - rented out the old Holy Rosary school to accommodate an over flow. And, never fail, every hot day, someone would pull the plug on the fire hydrant on my corner and kids would let loose in the street - by the dozens. That was 2002.

Charter schools unwelcome in Tennessee suburbs

Charter schools unwelcome in Tennessee suburbs

Charter schools unwelcome in Tennessee suburbs

Posted On January 31, 2011
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By CHRISTOPHER BUTLER

If you live in Shelby County and want your child to attend a charter school, he or she may qualify – but only if you live within the Memphis city limits.

For other Shelby County residents, charter school is not an option.

That is because school board members with the Shelby County School System, which operates separately from the Memphis City School System, have so far decreed that charter schools may not operate there.

Representatives from different proposed charter schools have three times applied for permission to operate in that county’s school system – but each attempt ended in failure. Charter schools are public, yet they operate independent of the local school board. Nonprofit organizations operate charter schools, outside the control of

What Factors Influence Educational Systems? « Cooperative Catalyst

What Factors Influence Educational Systems? « Cooperative Catalyst

What Factors Influence Educational Systems?

by Kevin

Hi everyone!

I’m assisting in a class on Systems Thinking and Decision-Making this semester and am putting together a simulation of educational systems for a little praxis in addition to the raw theoretical base of the class. Each student will be part of a small group representing a school system (public school, parochial school, standards-based charter school, innovative cooperative charter school, etc) that is interacting in the larger network of schooling in the city. Each school system has some shared and some distinct problems that they are dealing with, and so they are working sometimes along with, sometimes apart from, and sometimes in conflict with each other towards their own goals. As I’ve been doing research, I’ve been wanting to engage with better versed people on why some of the situations I’m discovering are the way they are. I’m trying to give them a reasonable starting state based on the current situation that they can research, but they will have the flexibility to make

Putting the "F" Word Back in Education | The Forum for Education and Democracy

Putting the "F" Word Back in Education | The Forum for Education and Democracy

Putting the "F" Word Back in Education Smokey Daniels, a well-known literacy guru, was talking about schools at a meeting my staff and I were attending. He stood up and said, “I think we need to put the “F” word back in schools. I mean we need “F” (pause for effect), “U” (another ...

Beyond Silver Bullets for American Education By Pedro Noguera and Randi Weingarten, December 22, 2010 previously published in *The Nation* Some of today's leading school "reformers" claim that the primary cause of the ills affecting American education is a glut of bad teachers, and that the ...

Meet the New Test -- Same as the Old Test In a recent Washington Post piece, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan repeated a refrain we have heard far too often about the subject of testing. In a nutshell, Duncan admits that No Child Left Behind and its reliance on standardized, ...

Will the Revolving Door for Urban Superintendents Ever Slow Down? It is the morning after the Nov. 2 election, and Mark Roosevelt is tired. The Pittsburgh schools chief has a cold and is in the third or fourth week of a diet and he’s been up until nearly dawn watching the election results on television. The news is ...

Tough Times Ahead for Public Education TULSA, OK – So you don't think the last election was a setback for teacher unions and education progressives? Think again. So says Kimberly Anderson, Director of Governmental Relations for the National Education Association. Earlier this month, she ...

Forum Conveners: We Need to Define Successful Schools TULSA, OK – Those who want to create better schools need to resist the urge to protect the status quo and instead provide a clear vision of what a good education system should look like. That was the message from Conveners from The Forum for ...

Teachers Urged to Take Back Their Profession TULSA, OK – Get parents on board. Withhold political contributions to politicians who would bash teachers. Expose myths. Resist bad practices. The hundreds of teachers who gathered here for the National Council of Urban Education Association's fall ...

Noguera Calls on CES Delegates to be "Critical Friends" SAN FRANCISCO -- Pedro Noguera has had plenty of access to Obama administration policy makers. In fact, he sat down with 50 people from the U.S. Department of Education, who listened to his thoughts for 90 minutes. "Then I left and nothing changed," ...

Putting Money Aside, and Asking Questions That Matter SAN FRANCISCO – Why do we require every youngster to spend 12 years in school? And why do we insist that unless students attend college, they have no future? Those kinds of question rarely get asked in public-policy debates about education. But ...

This Week In Education: Turnarounds: A Big Week For Obama's SIG Program

This Week In Education: Turnarounds: A Big Week For Obama's SIG Program

Turnarounds: A Big Week For Obama's SIG Program

by Alexander Russo

Down in Tampa at the Title I (NASTID) conference they're talking about how to help districts make good decisions with their SIG money and supervise the work that's being done. I'm hoping to get a report from there later today or tomorrow. Up in Washington there are two events -- one at Fordham on

School Tech Connect: The Things They Carried

School Tech Connect: The Things They Carried

The Things They Carried

by effacethefacade@yahoo.com (Tim)

I schlep around a lot of stuff every morning-- I thought I'd do a little inventory here and see what it is that I'm carrying, exactly, and whether it's all necessary or if I can get rid of any of it in the hope that my shoulders could ache just a little bit less. Let's have a look:

Ok, there's the sum of it, minus the sandwich I eat for lunch. What do we have? A Mac, where I do most of my

Diane Ravitch Takes Critics of Public Education to Task over Education Reform | e-Veritas

Diane Ravitch Takes Critics of Public Education to Task over Education Reform | e-Veritas

Diane Ravitch Takes Critics of Public Education to Task over Education Reform

Posted on 28 January 2011

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

Tags: school of education

Diane Ravitch, right, signs a copy of her latest book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, for School of Education graduate student Shahrzad Daneshvar.

With two years of service in the Teach for America program under her belt, Shahrzad Daneshvar settled into her seat in the University of Miami’s Storer Auditorium, anxious to hear what one of the nation’s top educational analysts and historians had to say about what is being done in the name of school reform.

For Daneshvar, a UM graduate student in the School of Education’s Community and Social Change Program, what she heard couldn’t have been more clear, direct, and unmistakable: Poor academic performance in the nation’s public schools is not a result of bad teachers but poverty, and to evaluate teacher effectiveness based on the test scores of their students will not help improve ailing school systems, but only

Edmodo Cybraryman Internet Catalogue

Cybraryman Internet Catalogue

Edmodo | Free Private Social Platform for Education

Education 2.0 - The Edmodo Blog - Free Private Microblogging for Teachers & Students Video

YouTube - edmodo tutorial

Edmodo Tutorial

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7 Brilliant Ways to use Edmodo that will Blow. Your. Mind.

Edmodo: Microblogging in the Classroom-Special Guest: Jeff O'Hara - Classroom 2.0 LIVE!

Technology Tips For All Teachers -TeacherTechBlog » Blog Archive » Teach Students to Use Social Media with Edmodo

Classroom 2.0 LIVE! Edmodo

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Go, Go Edmodo « My Other Blog

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Hechinger Report | A look inside a successful charter school culture

Hechinger Report | A look inside a successful charter school culture

A look inside a successful charter school culture

by Beth Hawkins

Dennis Sykes, Michelle Ramos and Patrick Murphy attend Pritzker College Prep, a charter high school located in a blue-collar neighborhood in Chicago.

CHICAGO — Seconds after principal Pablo Sierra knocked on the door of the classroom, a freshman named Anna stepped into the hall, smiled shyly and extended a hand to the principal.

“We’re learning how to improve our English composition,” she offered without prompting. “We’re working on our

Queens Teacher: Principal Responds to Bloombucks' Lies

Queens Teacher: Principal Responds to Bloombucks' Lies

Principal Responds to Bloombucks' Lies

by Queens Teacher

From Education Notes Online

As a practicing Catholic and proud union man I find it despicable that Bloomberg stoops to showing up regularly at Christian churches to to speak lies about the Teacher's union. Let him spill that nonsense somewhere other than in the House of God.

With over 20 years experience as both a teacher and principal I have the developed the greatest respect for the teachers who work in my school and District. If teachers do a poor job it is the job of their principals to write them up, get them the proper support and training and if they do not work out: get rid of them through progressive discipline.

It is not half as difficult for a competent principal to get rid of incompetent teachers as the media would have you

Urban Schools Have Become “Puppy Mills” « The Core Knowledge Blog

Urban Schools Have Become “Puppy Mills” « The Core Knowledge Blog

Urban Schools Have Become “Puppy Mills” Teacher Gerry Garibaldi’s urban Connecticut high school is not short on resources. “We don’t want for books—or for any of the cutting-edge gizmos that non–Title I schools can’t afford: computerized whiteboards, Elmo projectors, the works,” he writes ...

More Evidence for Self-Control Early to bed and early to rise may not make a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. But self-control just might. A long-term study shows that kids who demonstrate early signs of self-control “were not only less likely to have developed addictions or ...

IEA budget hearings. Before the storm. « Fred Klonsky's blog

IEA budget hearings. Before the storm. « Fred Klonsky's blog

IEA budget hearings. Before the storm.

by Fred Klonsky

Tomorrow around 6PM a blizzard is expected to hit Chicago dumping up to 20 inches of snow on the City with winds up to 40 miles an hour by Wednesday noon.

Tonight I’ll be heading over to the Region office of the IEA for a budget hearing in preparation for the Representative Assembly in March.

Passing the IEA budget is the main formal business of the RA. Discussions around the budget provide an opportunity to raise questions about IEA policy and direction.

Tonight we get to look at the salary of the Director of Field Services ($492,620), and Area Coordinators (total