Thursday, February 3, 2011

The Answer Sheet - Why aren't public school parents protesting?

Why aren't public school parents protesting?

This was written by Rebecca Levey, a writer who maintains a blog called Beccarama. She has written for the Silicon Valley Moms Group, and her posts have been nationally syndicated by McClatchy/Tribune and appeared online in publications including the Miami Herald and The Chicago Sun Times. She is part of the Yahoo! Mother Board, a community of over 50 mom-bloggers, and is the social media editor for Mom Blog Magazine, the latest e-publication from the Mom Bloggers Club. She also does a weekly podcast called the Blogging Angels with three co-hosts to discuss women and social media. A longer version of this post appeared on Beccarama. By Rebecca Levey Why aren’t parents rioting in the streets? This is the question an educator asked me Tuesday. A private school educator in New York City. We were among over 200 people invited to Barry Diller’s IAC headquarters in Chelsea to have lunch

Schools Matter: Joel Klein Steps Into Role as Oligarchs' Bomb Thrower

Joel Klein Steps Into Role as Oligarchs' Bomb Thrower

by Jim Horn

While Joel Klein was Chancellor of NYC Schools, there was no one besides Bloomberg that teachers hated more within the five boroughs. With his saccharine smirk that elevates an arrogance born of ignorance and an utter disdain for educators, Klein played McChoakumchild to Bloomberg's Gradgrind with true Dickensian authenticity.

Now that Klein is spending more time with his family in the wake of the great New York test score fraud, he has yet ascended to the boardroom of News Corp, where he gets his marching orders from Murdoch's top

Welcome to Chicago, Rahm. You must be new around here. « Fred Klonsky's blog

Welcome to Chicago, Rahm. You must be new around here.

by Fred Klonsky

Popout

The Illinois Supreme Court may have declared Rahm Emanuel a Chicagoan, but I have my doubts.

Not after I received the email from his campaign.

It warned of the snow. He gave us a half a dozen tips on what to do.

Billionaires’ School Reform: What It Means for Teachers and Students | Labor Notes

Billionaires’ School Reform: What It Means for Teachers and Students

Julie Cavanagh

| February 1, 2011

Education “reform” is dominated by a privileged few who seek to change schooling from a public service to a lucrative business. Photo: Jim West.

The public conversation around education “reform” is dominated by a privileged few who seek to change schooling from a public service to a lucrative business.

Millionaires and billionaires, such as Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and the Walton family, owners of Wal-Mart, have spent years pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into think tanks and political campaigns.

They have captured the media through projects like the movie “Waiting for Superman” and NBC’s “Education Nation.” Their intent is clear: to gain control of public opinion and public policy and open up access to what they refer to as the K-12 “market,” namely, our schools.

Sadly, the Obama administration, led by Education Secretary Arne Duncan, has the

Modern School: Stealing Educational Services: OK for Corporations, Not For Poor Moms

Possible Reprieve for Kelley Williams-Bolar Ohio Gov. John Kasich has agreed to investigate the case of Kelley Williams-Bolar, the black Akron mother who was convicted of “stealing” educational services by enrolling her kids in a white middle class school outside of her home district. "Our ...

Stealing Educational Services: OK for Corporations, Not For Poor Moms *While the **Copley-Fairlawn school district spent $6,000 on a private dick to bust a poor black woman for “stealing” educational services for her daughters, corporate education plunderers have been defrauding the state of Ohio under cover of NCLB’s ...

Relational Bullying: How Pundits & Politicians Bully Teachers Image by EddieS Here’s an interesting piece on bullying Researchers Look for Ways to Curb 'Mean Girls' and Gossip that I found on the San Diego Education Report Blog. The article is posted below my comments (in italics). *The basic idea is that ...

The Best Sites For Learning About The “Blizzard Of Oz” | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

The Best Sites For Learning About The “Blizzard Of Oz” The “Blizzard Of Oz” is the name some in the media are giving the monster storm hitting the Midwest and Northeastern United States this week. I thought readers might find it useful for me to bring a few multimedia resources on the event together for ...

Check Out These Awards For “disingenuous education reports produced by think tanks” *“The Bunkum Awards highlight nonsensical, confusing, and disingenuous education reports produced by think tanks. They are given each year by the Think Twice think tank review project to think tank reports judged to have most egregiously undermined ...

A Collection Of My Most Unusual “The Best…” Lists So far, I’ve posted 615 — yes, 615 – “The Best…” lists over the past three years, and most get continually updated and revised. I know they’ve been useful to my students and me, and I think most have been helpful to other teachers, too. There have ..

The Arrogance Of Bill Gates — Part Two Late last year, I wrote a post titled The Arrogance of Bill Gates. It was a commentary about his attack on Diane Ravitch in Newsweek by saying that since she didn’t agree with him than she must be for the status quo. He’s at it again. Here are a few ...

New schools chief to focus on teacher quality - LA Daily News

Catholic schools get option for longer year LONG BEACH - Not every Catholic elementary school will have to extend its academic calendar next year.

New schools chief to focus on teacher quality The incoming Los Angeles schools superintendent says he will boost student achievement through better teaching when he takes the reins of the nation's second-largest school district in April.

LAUSD's decision to delay calendar change applauded Teachers union leaders and some San Fernando Valley parents claimed victory Wednesday as LAUSD formally announced they were delaying the launch of the controversial "early start" calendar until 2012.

Los Pediatras Emiten Nuevas Recomendaciones Sobre Vacunas - Hispanically Speaking News

Los Pediatras Emiten Nuevas Recomendaciones Sobre Vacunas

En la nueva programación se incluyen la tos ferina y la meningitis

Los adolescentes necesitan un refuerzo para protegerse de la meningitis meningocócica, una infección potencialmente mortal del tejido que rodea el cerebro, mientras que los niños deberían tener sus vacunas contra la tos ferina al día, teniendo en cuenta las nuevas recomendaciones de los expertos en pediatría.

La Academia Estadounidense de Pediatría emite directrices actualizadas sobre vacunación cada año. Su nueva programación, publicada el 1 de febrero en la revista Pediatrics, es muy similar a las recomendaciones del año pasado.

Pero incluso sin cambios de consideración, los pediatras aseguran que la programación revisada es una buena oportunidad para recordarles a los padres que deben asegurarse de que todas las vacunas de sus hijos estén al

NYC Educator: Cathie Black Does Not Get It, to Put it Mildly

Cathie Black Does Not Get It, to Put it Mildly

by Miss Eyre

Cathie, Cathie, Cathie. Where do I begin?

You have to know that there were a lot of people--myself included--who were willing to give you a chance as Chancellor. You failing at being Chancellor would no doubt damage schools and kids, something none of us wants. As much as we were skeptical of a total outsider coming in and running the schools, a lot of us hoped (perhaps against hope) that you would nevertheless have a successful and productive run at the job, for the good of everyone involved.

But you don't seem to understand that you are now a public servant, just like everyone you now supervise at the DOE. You are not accountable to stockholders, but to stakeholders, for whom the issues to which you were (maybe?) listening at the PEP meeting on Tuesday night are matters of, if not quite life and death, certainly life itself. Your sarcastic response to a crowd, even one which, I'll grant, was pretty unruly at that point, was not becoming of a professional of your stature. Teachers are frequently warned

Supporters rally behind in-state tuition bill | EdNewsColorado

Video: Undocumented student tells her story [image: Sonia, an undocumented student living in Denver] Sonia is one of three students who spoke at Wednesday’s press conference at the state Capitol about the impact of her undocumented status. Like the others, the Denver college student did not ...

Supporters rally behind in-state tuition bill [image: Virna, an undocumented high school student in Denver, becomes emotional describing her hopes for the future during Wednesday's press conference.] Virna, an undocumented student in Denver, becomes emotional describing her hopes for the future ...

Current K-12 funding situation stable – for now *Daily roundup* - Too many reports - Truancy bill amended - New bills The House and Senate education committees Wednesday got some slightly reassuring – but by no means definitive – news about state support for schools in the current ...

This Week In Education: People: RIP, KIPP "Inventor" Harriett Ball

Books: A Perfect Test, A Secret List... A Murder [image: image from 3.bp.blogspot.com] I haven't even gotten my review copy but I'm already excited about The Perfect Test, Ron Dietel's forthcoming school reform novel: *"Husband and wife researchers Grant and Jennifer Wilson develop what they ...

Video: The Long-Awaited Return Of Edu-Pundit Patrick (Eduflack) Riccard's animatronic character, Edu-pundit, makes his TV debut. You should watch (though in a perfect world Riccards would have invented Edu-Flack, right?)

People: RIP, KIPP "Inventor" Harriett Ball [image: ScreenHunter_02 Feb. 02 22.35] Click below to read about the sad passing of Harriett Ball, the African-American teacher who taught Mike and Dave many of the teaching strategies upon which KIPP has been based. Now is probably not the time or ...

Eduflack: Is Parental Engagement So Wrong?

Is Parental Engagement So Wrong?

by Eduflack

Blogging can often be a lonely sport. One man, one computer. If you are fortunate, you get folks who will comment on your posts or engage via email. But it can be a very wordy game of electronic solitaire.

But it doesn't necessarily have to be that way. Over at www.onlineschools.org, they've launched "Education Debate," an electronic town hall that brings together authors to debate and engage on a range of issues in the areas of K-12, politics and policy, higher education, and

The Answer Sheet - The VIVA Project: What teachers told Duncan

The VIVA Project: What teachers told Duncan

More than 150 public school teachers from 27 states, seeking to get their voices heard by education policymakers in this let’s-bash-teachers era, collaborated to devise solutions to problems that most affect their profession. They wrote their conclusions in a paper called "Voices From the Classroom," and then, in a town where such reports are constantly released and then forgotten, they got to do something unusual: present them to Education Secretary Arne Duncan. The effort is called the VIVA Project -- Voices, Ideas, Vision, Action -- which was created to give classroom teachers a chance to share ideas and take a role in making state and national policy decisions involving public schools. The project's aim is to connect teachers with public officials so that the latter can better understand what reallly goes on in classrooms. The project was launched last fall with an on-line discussion that led to the report that

State’s hardly ‘persistently lowest list’ | Thoughts on Public Education

State’s hardly ‘persistently lowest list’ - by John Fensterwald - Educated Guess

by John Fensterwald - Educated Guess

Most of the 96 schools that the state has designated among the 5 percent “persistently lowest performing” shouldn’t be on the list. Yet they could qualify for the $69 million that the Department of Education has allotted California for schools to turn themselves around. That’s the conclusion of Doug McRae, a retired test publisher, occasional TOP-Ed [...]

Don’t hold your breath for GOP cuts - by John Fensterwald - Educated Guess

by John Fensterwald - Educated Guess

It’s fascinating – actually exasperating – to watch the powerful feign impotence. By nature of the need for a two-thirds majority, Republicans in the Legislature control whether voters will have the right to extend $11 billion in temporary taxes for the next five years. Democrats alone will fall five votes short – three in the Senate [...]

School Tech Connect: A Father's Perspective

A Father's Perspective

by effacethefacade@yahoo.com (Tim)

Just wanted to post some audio of Governor Quinn's signing the law creating civil unions here in the Land of Lincoln. There were a lot of speeches, but these words by Senator David Koehler were simple and stirring. Take a listen.

Nice. Evidently there are people so bent out of shape that they called him to complain, so my hat's off to Koehle

Diane Ravitch Says “Yuck” to This Idea

by Bill Tucker

Barry Salzberg and J. B. Schramm from College Summit, a nonprofit that partners with high schools to build college-going cultures, write in Forbes about the value of providing information to high schools on how their graduates actually fare in college:

Charles Thomas, the principal of Crossland High School, in Prince George’s County, Md., lifted his school’s performance from among the county’s worst to among its best in just six years. His success has been heralded in the Harvard Business Review and on the U.S. Department of Education’s “What Works” website. But even he admits that without data, he has to rely on the occasional fortuitous anecdote.
“One day a mother of one of our star graduates said her daughter was struggling with college

VIDEO! Two Council Members, Dozens of Parents Arrested Protesting School Closures at DOE « EdVox

VIDEO! Two Council Members, Dozens of Parents Arrested Protesting School Closures at DOE

by edvoxny

Hundreds of Fed Up Parents, Students Rally to “Fix Schools, Not Just Close Them”

Two New York City Council Members and dozens of parents and youth were arrested for blocking traffic at Chambers and Centre Street following a rally outside Department of Education (DOE) headquarters. Council

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Dawn of the Dumbest Data…or | Mr. Teachbad's Blog of Teacher Disgruntlement

Dawn of the Dumbest Data…or

by mrteachbad

Data Driven Dimentia…or

Data: It Keeps Teachers Busy

Take your pick. But these cats at my school really have to be stopped.

As you may suspect, we here at my school are “data-driven”. That’s right. There is no substitute for data. And the best thing about it, from an administrator’s point of view, must be that you don’t have to worry about how long it takes teachers to collect the data or if it is really of any value in the first place. Just collect that data, tell everybody you are collecting it, and that you are using it to make data-driven decisions….for the kids. The rest, my friend, will fall into place. No worries.

Here is an example from my school, which has always been stupid and intermittently enforced. But it has taken on a new dimension to make it an even greater waste of time. I’m not sure if it makes it any more useless. You

Dissent Magazine - Winter 2011 Issue - Got Dough? How Billion...

Got Dough? How Billionaires Rule Our Schools

By Joanne Barkan

THE cost of K–12 public schooling in the United States comes to well over $500 billion per year. So, how much influence could anyone in the private sector exert by controlling just a few billion dollars of that immense sum? Decisive influence, it turns out. A few billion dollars in private foundation money, strategically invested every year for a decade, has sufficed to define the national debate on education; sustain a crusade for a set of mostly ill-conceived reforms; and determine public policy at the local, state, and national levels. In the domain of venture philanthropy—where donors decide what social transformation they want to engineer and then design and fund projects to implement their vision—investing in education yields great bang for the buck.

Hundreds of private philanthropies together spend almost $4 billion annually to support or transform K–12 education, most of it directed to schools that serve low-income children (only religious organizations receive more money). But three funders

Score Card on Kids' Health Care Ranks California 44th - The Bay Citizen

Score Card on Kids' Health Care Ranks California 44th

A Commonwealth Fund survey compares the states on childrens' health care access and treatment

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By ANNETTE FUENTES on February 2, 2011 - 4:30 p.m. PST

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A child receives a vaccination at a health clinic

California does poorly by its children when it comes to health care, ranking 44th among the states for a slew of indicators, according to a survey released today by a national health care foundation.

“State Scorecard on Child Health System Performance, 2011” takes a state-by-state look at how well the health care system serves kids, looking at 20 indicators, including insurance coverage, affordability of care and access to treatment. Massachusetts ranks first.

Many states have made strides over the last decade in increasing the number of kids and their parents who have health insurance and care—especially in the last few years of recession, when job loss has translated into

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