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Friday, February 4, 2011

Big Education Ape: Ed News Now

Big Education Ape: Ed News Now

Big Education Ape: Ed News Now

as shared by 6 people on Coopmike48’s Twitter list
harvinmoore.com - How do you get in there? And how can they see out? This provocative editorial from Chester Finn of the Fordham Foundation. Think about it – how does tenure help children? Opinion: Nobody deserves ...

coopmike48
ny1.com - To view our videos, you need toenable JavaScript. Learn how.install Adobe Flash 9 or above. Install now. Then come back here and refresh the page. Hundred of parents, students and teachers swarme...

leoniehaimson
thefightback.org - At the height of their power, former D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty and Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee closed 23 schools. The Fenty/Rhee goal had been 24. The parents at John Burroughs Elementary School...

DianeRavitch
huffingtonpost.com - CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. — The teachers at Central Falls High School struck a deal to get their jobs back last year after the entire staff was fired in a radical, last-ditch attempt to raise student per...

DianeRavitch
ednotesonline.blogspot.com - It is our only form of expression, the only place victims can tell their side of the story. It is a charade, it is a rubber stamp for pre-made decisions by faceless powerful bureaucrats, but it is ...

leoniehaimson

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coopmike48 Education Research Report: The rise of K-12 blended learning -http://goo.gl/h0IMF4 minutes ago · reply

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coopmike48 This Week In Education: Ideas: A Preliminary List Of "Non-Reform" Education Heroes http://bit.ly/eghTpu #Edu3 minutes ago · reply

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coopmike48 Waiting for…a Champion of Progressive Education « Students For Education Reform http://bit.ly/fb91eh #Edu2 minutes ago · reply

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mikeklonsky Battle for Tahrir: Inside Look at How Pro-Democracy Activists Reclaimed Tahrir Square After Attacks by Mubarak Forces http://t.co/Nu42E15about 1 minute ago · reply

#edu Read this paper36 MORE ARTICLES
bigeducationape.blogspot.com - Report cards that detail test scores, expulsion rates, teacher salaries and other information on San Diego Unified schools are tardy once again, making it harder for them to serve their supposed pu...

coopmike48
bigeducationape.blogspot.com - Several groups, including the Los Angeles public schools teachers union, are expressing concern that the L.A. Unified School District has postponed a decision on who will run three low-performing s...

coopmike48
bigeducationape.blogspot.com - Compton, Calif.A Los Angeles judge issued a temporary injunction Thursday against the Compton Unified School District after six parents and their children sued, alleging that district officials wer...

coopmike48
Media4

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DianeRavitch

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Education110 MORE ARTICLES
nydailynews.com - Lanzilote for News A protest against proposed school closings outside Brooklyn Technical High School gathers Thursday night. Hundreds of parents, teachers and students turned up Thursday night for ...

leoniehaimson
nepc.colorado.edu - While the Heritage Foundation receives this award for publishing Closing the Racial Achievement Gap, byMatthew Ladner and Lindsey Burke, it should really share this award with the think tanks in Co...

mikeklonsky
chicagomag.com - Feb 2, 2011 By Carol Felsenthal Miguel del Valle doesn’t have much money—peanuts compared to Rahm Emanuel and Gery Chico, and way less even than Patricia Watkins and Carol Moseley Braun. When I ask...

mikeklonsky
Politics14 MORE ARTICLES
gothamschools.org - A Marist College poll released this evening shows that new Schools Chancellor Cathie Black has less public support than her predecessor, Joel Klein, did when he took the job eight years ago. Curren...

leoniehaimson
bigeducationape.blogspot.com - The federal budget is $3.8 trillion.The Republicans have just come up with their plan to cut the federal budget. They’ve found $32 billion of cuts.Their fiery campaign rhetoric, fierce determinatio...

coopmike48
suntimes.com - Del Valle links rivals to convicted ex-Streets and San boss By Abdon M. Pallasch Political Reporter/apallasch@suntimes.com Feb 3, 2011 07:12PM City Clerk Miguel del Valle on Thursday tried to conne...

mikeklonsky
Business4 MORE ARTICLES
modeducation.blogspot.com - Duane Campbell, from the Sacramento Progressive Alliance, and the Choosing Democracy blog, sent California Gov. Jerry Brown an alternative budget proposal, in response to the request for budget sug...

coopmike48
dailynews.com - Galpin Ford in North Hills and three other local car dealerships will provide paid internships for automotive-technician students at Los Angeles Trade Technical College and Pierce College under an ...

coopmike48
blogs.wsj.com - By Sara MurrayNearly a year and a half into the economic recovery, some 43.6 million Americans continued to rely on food stamps in November. More than 14% of the population drew food stamps in Nove...

mikeklonsky
Living3 MORE ARTICLES
latimes.com - By Hector Tobar February 4, 2011 Some bright lights in Washington have come up with another solution to the problem of illegal immigration. This one won't ever become law, because it involves tinke...

mikeklonsky
suntimes.com - Ex-Streets and Sanitation boss Sanchez gets 2 1/2 years in prison By NATASHA KORECKI Federal Courts Reporter / nkorecki@suntimes.com Feb 3, 2011 05:49PM Al Sanchez at Dirksen Federal Building, 219 ...

mikeklonsky
hispanicallyspeakingnews.com - Published at 6:26 pm, February 3, 2011 Two Haitian children found inside a church in Puerto Plata did not die of cholera Dominican Republic authorities are saying. The two deceased children were fo...

coopmike48
Art & Entertainment1 MORE ARTICLES
nybooks.com - Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush in The King's SpeechThere is nothing the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences loves more than movies about people with physical or mental disabilities (or addic...

mikeklonsky
hispanicallyspeakingnews.com - It’s probably the first test for many going off to college, and they take it without setting foot inside a classroom. Unfortunately for some, they don’t always get an A.The “test” is filling out Th...

coopmike48
bigeducationape.blogspot.com - 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/Trib...

coopmike48
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Save Our Schools - National March and Days of Action July 28-31, 2011

Save Our Schools - National March and Days of Action July 28-31, 2011


Save Our Schools
March & National
Call to Action
July 28, 2011
to July 31, 2011

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

  • Curricula developed by and for local school communities


Welcome to the Save Our Schools March
and National Call to Action!

As concerned citizens, we demand an end to the destructive policies eroding confidence in our public schools, demoralizing teachers, and reducing the education for too many of our children to nothing more than exercises for test preparation.

A well-educated society is essential to the future of the United States of America. Our students must have access to a fully funded, world-class public education system and it is our responsibility to act now by holding our government accountable for providing the means to achieve it!


DC March July 28 - July 31



We, a collection of people from all walks of life and every corner of this nation, embody a mixture of ideas and opinions regarding how we can improve educational opportunities for all children. We stand united by one belief - it’s time for teachers and parents to organize and take back control of our schools.

Please join us. . .

July 30, 2011
Save Our Schools March in Washington, D.C.

July 28, 2011 - July 31, 2011
Save Our schools Days of Action events in D.C., including workshops,
film festival, speakers and educational events - with concurrent regional
and local events organized around the country.


What do Diane Ravitch (The Death and Life of the Great American School System),
Yong Zhao (Catching Up or Leading the Way), Deborah Meier (The Power of Their Ideas), and Vicki Abeles (Race to Nowhere) all have in common?

They support the SOS March & National Call to Action!
View our full list of endorsers here.




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Waiting for…a Champion of Progressive Education « Students For Education Reform

Waiting for…a Champion of Progressive Education « Students For Education Reform

Waiting for…a Champion of Progressive Education

Alexander Russo at This Week in Education has an outstanding post today about watching out for the “anti-reform wrecking ball.” I think the TFA/Michelle Rhee/KIPP/etc reformers can get incredibly frustrated when their opponents consistently tear down new ideas and models in education without proposing solutions of their own or pointing to models that they think are working. And I absolutely agree with Russo that “it’s time for a more positive, hopeful narrative, with a new set of examples and heroes illustrating an alternative path to success.” But here’s one problem I see: the anti-reform wrecking ball may have already done too much damage. That is, opponents of reform have spent so much time using the wrecking ball that they’ve actually torn down their own progressive models of education.

Here’s an example. There’s a school in Harlem that many might describe as a “community school.” It’s small, with a joyfu

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This Week In Education: Ideas: A Preliminary List Of "Non-Reform" Education Heroes

This Week In Education: Ideas: A Preliminary List Of "Non-Reform" Education Heroes

Ideas: A Preliminary List Of "Non-Reform" Education Heroes

by Alexander Russo

image from dulemba.comThere was lots of behind-the-scenes reaction to last week's "wrecking ball" post. Most of the folks I sent it to seemed to think that such a thing wasn't possible given lack of money, or wise given recent inroads, or were understandably exasperated that I didn't know their heroes and accomplishments already. But there were also some examples of new and worthy stories of a more positive version of educators responding to the reform agenda including the Save Our Schools march being planned for this summer, the ongoing work of the Broader, Bolder coalition (Elaine Weiss was at the Fordham event yesterday), a call from Pedro Noguero for

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The agenda behind teacher union-bashing | Paul Thomas | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

The agenda behind teacher union-bashing | Paul Thomas | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

The agenda behind teacher union-bashing

The attacks on teachers and unions are not about educational reform, but turning the teaching profession into a service industry

Geoffrey Canada Waiting for 'Superman'
Geoffrey Canada, standing, in a scene from the documentary Waiting for 'Superman'. Photograph: AP Photo/Paramount Pictures

Management and labour are hurtling towards an impasse, and a work stoppage looms. Workers are seeking public support by emphasising the importance of benefits for workers, specifically longterm healthcare for conditions caused by the profession that do not appear until later in life.

This may sound for many like the possible scenario for a teachers' strike, backed by a powerful teachers' union. But if this were a teachers' strike, in 2011, we could anticipate little support for those teachers – not least because of the propaganda created by Davis Guggenheim's documentary Waiting for "Superman" and the rise of false prophets of

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Cathie Black Confronted by a Mob of Angry Parents -- Daily Intel


Cathie Black Confronted by a Mob of Angry Parents



Cathie Black Confronted by a Mob of Angry ParentsCathie Black must have known it wasn't going to be all sharpening pencils and flipping through textbooks, but she probably didn't imagine being Bloomberg's chancellor of schools would put her front and center for a verbal attack. Tonight at a hearing on the proposed closure of twelve Brooklyn schools, the former Hearst exec was verbally lambasted by a cadre of angry parents. Many of the nearly 1,800 attendees expressed their disappointment — quite loudly — by chanting "Cathie Black is wack" and "Black must go." Heckles and jeers were heard throughout the duration of Black's speech, and nearly the entire crowd walked out during the meeting in protest.
Black's troubles started Tuesday night, when she was at odds with another angry group of parents and didn't handle it well. While trying to speak to the crowd at Tuesday's school-

Cathie Black Confronted by a Mob of Angry Parents -- Daily Intel
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Robert Reich (The Jobs Report, and America's Two Economies)

Robert Reich (The Jobs Report, and America's Two Economies)

The Jobs Report, and America's Two Economies

At a time when corporate profits are through the roof, the Dow is flirting with 12,000, Wall Street paychecks are fat again, and big corporations are sitting on more than $1 trillion in cash, you’d expect jobs be coming back. But you’d be wrong.

The U.S. economy added just 36,000 jobs in January, according to today’s report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Remember, 125,000 are needed just to keep up with the increase in population of Americans wanting and needing work. And 300,000 a month are needed continuously for five years if we’re to get back to anything like the employment we had before the Great Recession.

In other words, today’s employment report should be sending alarm bells all over official Washington. This economy is still terribly sick. (Technical note: The official rate of unemployment fell to 9 percent from 9.4 percent, but that’s because more workers have left the labor market, too discouraged to continue looking for

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Rosa, Rosa, Rosa – A Little Something for Black History Month

Rosa, Rosa, Rosa – A Little Something for Black History Month

Rosa, Rosa, Rosa – A Little Something for Black History Month

by ERNIE MCCRAY on FEBRUARY 4, 2011

in: CIVIL RIGHTS, CULTURE, FROM THE SOUL, HISTORY, LIFE EVENTS, ORGANIZING


Forever etched in my mind and soul is an image of Rosa Parks sitting softly, as she had in that historic picture of her looking out of a bus window, with a white man sitting behind her with a kind of “going with the flow” expression on his face.

In this particular vision, as she sits, she is radiating her warm smile my way as I and a few children from a school where I was the principal, on one occasion, and my twin daughters and youngest son, on another occasion, sang to her.

“Rosa, Rosa, Rosa,” we serenaded. “Rose up from the crowd.” I had shared with all the children how her simple act of defiance affected so many people so the next words were: “Rosa, Rosa, Rosa made us feel, oh so proud. Got us up on our feet. Yes, oh yes, she did. Got our souls to humming and our hearts to beat. Oh, yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah.”

I recalled for the children my first bus trip in the 40’s with my mother somewhere below the Mason and Dixon Line. I told them how I, without knowing what I was doing, since I was only

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Study: Mich. public pay, benefits not out of line - Boston.com

Study: Mich. public pay, benefits not out of line - Boston.com

Study: Mich. public pay, benefits not out of line

By Kathy Barks Hoffman
Associated Press / February 4, 2011
Text size – +

LANSING, Mich.—A new study released Thursday contradicts Gov. Rick Snyder's contention that public workers' pay and benefits are out of line with the private sector, saying instead that state workers make about 7 percent less in pay and benefits annually than their private counterparts, while local government workers make about the same.

"Public employees do get much better health care benefits than private-sector employees get, but they pay for it through lower wages," said the study's author, Jeffrey Keefe, a labor and employment relations associate professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey. "Public employees in the state of Michigan are ... neither overpaid nor overcompensated."

Keefe's research challenges a citizen's guide Gov. Rick Snyder released Monday that showed the average state worker makes over $85,000 in pay and benefits, while a private-sector worker makes just under $40,000.

The Republican governor acknowledged his data includes minimum-wage and

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Schools Matter: Rahm's Too Big to Fail?

Schools Matter: Rahm's Too Big to Fail?
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Innaharda, ehna kullina Misryeen! “Egypt is NY!” « Fred Klonsky's blog

Innaharda, ehna kullina Misryeen! “Egypt is NY!” « Fred Klonsky's blog

Innaharda, ehna kullina Misryeen! “Egypt is NY!”

by Fred Klonsky

I was down on the floor doing my morning crunches. I don’t usually watch Morning Joe on MSNBC, but I was hoping to see some pictures from Cairo. Instead I heard Chris Matthews say he was ashamed to be an American because we are deserting our friend.

His friend is Hosni Mubarak.

Whether or not the US is deserting Mubarak remains to be seen. But I watch the Egyptians, maybe a million, in Liberation Square, and I know that they are my friends.

Not Hosni Mubarak.

Innaharda, ehna kullina Misryeen!

Today, we are all

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Shanker Blog » A Quality-Based Look At Seniority-Based Layoffs

Shanker Blog » A Quality-Based Look At Seniority-Based Layoffs

A Quality-Based Look At Seniority-Based Layoffs

by Matthew Di Carlo

Eliminating seniority-based layoffs is a policy idea that is making the rounds these days, with proponents making special appeals to cash-strapped states and districts desperately looking for ways to save money while minimizing decreases in the quality of services. Mayors, editorial boards, and others have joined in the chorus.

There’s a few existing high-quality simulations that compare seniority-based layoffs with one alternative – laying off based on teachers’ value-added scores (most recently, one analysis of Washington State and another using data from New York City; both are worth reading). Unsurprisingly, the simulations show that the two policies would not lay off the same teachers, and that the seniority-based layoffs would save less money for the same number of dismissals (since the least experienced teachers are paid less). In addition, the teachers laid off

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Support the People of Egypt Now « Bill Ayers

Support the People of Egypt Now « Bill Ayers

Support the People of Egypt Now

by billayers

The US government must break its ties to the dictatorship in Egypt. As courageous Egyptians are being bombarded with US tear gas and other Made-in-the-USA weapons, US officials hypocritically call for peace and a peaceful transition. Just this week they “discovered” Mubarak is a dictator, but the US gives $1.3 billion a year of our tax dollars to Hosni Mubarak. The US has give Egypt $68 billion since 1948, and since 1979, Egypt has been the second- biggest recipient of US aid after Israel. This US aid to Egypt includes military weapons that have been used to suppress the people and silence any opposition, and during the last few days against peaceful protesters.

Join human rights groups around the world in calling upon the US government to stand on the right

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ASCD Inservice: Character Education for the Digital Age

ASCD Inservice: Character Education for the Digital Age

Character Education for the Digital Age

Feb11cover_blog"Should we teach our children as though they have two lives, or one?"

That's the question Jason Ohler poses in "Character Education for the Digital Age'.

Current policy norms--blocking large portions of the internet in schools or fragmented, case-by-case approaches to cyberbullying and inappropriate online activities--treat students as if they live two lives: the traditional, digitally unplugged life at school, and the digitally-infused life outside of school.

We're missing an enormous opportunity to help students live one, integrated life, by not using

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“You Bet Your LIFO” | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

“You Bet Your LIFO” | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...
“You Bet Your LIFO” You Bet Your LIFO (last in/first out) is a great post by Nancy Flanagan at Ed Week. Because of its connection (though it’s not necessarily the same issue) to tenure, I’m adding it to The Best Articles For Helping To Understand Why Teacher Tenure Is ...
“Social and emotional learning programs found to boost students’ skills” A major new study just came out reaffirming what most teachers already know — that helping students develop their capacity for self control and to identify positive goals helps them be more successful academically. Coincidentally, that’s the topic of ...
Talking To Students About Their Reading (& Their Data) As regular readers know, our school works closely with Kelly Young from Pebble Creek Labs on our curriculum and instructional strategies. One of the Pebble Creek-designed assessments we use in our English classes is having students complete the same ...
“Thousands Gather To Mourn Hmong Leader Vang Pao” Thousands Gather To Mourn Hmong Leader Vang Pao is the title of the NPR story on the six day funeral in Fresno for Hmong leader General Vang Pao. I’m adding it to The Best Websites To Learn About The Hmong.
The Most Popular Stories On NPR As I’ve explained in earlier pieces, I periodically post “most popular” lists of websites (and books) that I think educators might find useful. Of course, there are a number of ways to gauge “popularity.” I just view these lists as opportunities to ...
Lots Of New Lessons & Resources On Egypt Protests Here are the newest additions to The Best Sites For Learning About The Protests In Egypt: Protests Sweep Middle East is a page of resources from Scholastic. Teaching About Events in the Middle East: Lesson Plan is from The Huffington Post. Violent ...
For Theory Of Knowledge Teachers In addition to teaching Intermediate English and mainstream English classes (and sometimes Social Studies classes), I also teach IB Theory of Knowledge classes and sometimes share TOK resources on this blog. I’ve recently posted quite a few new ...
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