Monday, March 28, 2011

How School Choice Has Changed the Face of Public Schools - voiceofsandiego.org: Schooled: The Education Blog

How School Choice Has Changed the Face of Public Schools

Photo by Sam Hodgson
Ninety percent of students at Golden Hill K-8 School are Latino — yet the neighborhoods it draws from are actually more racially diverse.

Posted: Sunday, March 27, 2011 2:50 pm |Updated: 7:59 am, Mon Mar 28, 2011.

By Emily Alpert

Once upon a time, you just went to the public school down the street in your neighborhood. That was how Karen Calderon remembered it. But choosing a school for her son was anything but simple.

Her neighbors warned her about iffy scores at their nearby Clairemont school. So she scoped out other schools, gauging their test scores, what time they started, which middle schools they fed into. Calderon toured five schools and wrestled with her choice, changing her mind over and over.

Even now she wonders if she asked the right questions. Calderon snagged a spot

Dear Audrey. « Fred Klonsky's blog

Dear Audrey.

by Fred Klonsky

Audrey Soglin

Executive Director, Illinois Education Association

Springfield, Illinois

Dear Audrey,

When I heard about Professor William Conon this past week, I was concerned.

“Here we go again,” I said to myself.

An outspoken teacher, a respected historian at a major university, has his emails examined by some right-wing witch hunters. This time it wasn’t some nutty little group in western Michigan. It was the Republican Party.

Although, what’s the difference?

When this same thing happened to me a month ago, I immediately contacted the IEA.

My union.

Following days of silence from

Test Gains at Michelle Rhee’s Favorite School Possibly Fabricated | FDL News Desk

Test Gains at Michelle Rhee’s Favorite School Possibly Fabricated

by David Dayen

Mistakes were made... just not counted. (photo: dweebydude5)

Michelle Rhee, the former DC schools chief, has a perception of being results-oriented. She doesn’t have personal animus toward teacher’s unions, she just feels that the best way to improve learning for students is to engage in policies that allow her to elevate the best teachers and fire the worst. The rights of the student come first. It’s all about results.

So it’s very revealing to see this story in USA Today, hinting that the high performances in the classrooms Rhee oversaw may have been altered:

WAY TESTY Hechinger Report | In Georgia, test-answer erasures triggered criminal probe

Hechinger Report | In Georgia, test-answer erasures triggered criminal probe

In Georgia, test-answer erasures triggered criminal probe *By Jack Gillum and Marisol Bello, USA TODAY* Kathleen Mathers oversees investigations of cheating in Georgia schools. (Photo by By Ben Gray, Atlanta Journal Constitution) The same kind of high erasure rates that have been reported on standardized ...

When standardized test scores soared in D.C., were the gains real? *By Jack Gillum and Marisol Bello, USA TODAY* Marvin Tucker raised questions about high test scores of daughter Marlana, right, now 16, that showed math proficiency despite her struggle with the basics when she attended D.C.'s Noyes. (Photo by Jack ...

Keeping the State’s Money in the State | Dissident Voice

Keeping the State’s Money in the State

An Alternative Solution To The Budget Crisis

by Ellen Hodgson Brown / March 28th, 2011

Cut spending, raise taxes, sell off public assets – these are the unsatisfactory solutions being debated across the nation; but the budget crises now being suffered by nearly all the states did not arise from too much spending or too little taxation. They arose from a credit freeze on Wall Street. In the wake of the 2009 financial market collapse, banks curtailed their lending more sharply than in any year since 1942, driving massive unemployment and causing local tax revenues to plummet.

The logical solution, then, is to restore credit to the local economy. But how? The Federal Reserve could provide the capital and liquidity necessary to create bank credit, in the same way that it provided $12.3 trillion in liquidity and short-term loans to the large money center banks. But Fed Chairman Ben

murphy can has congress | The Official Site of Ian Murphy for Congress

Are you fed up?

Posted on March 27, 2011 by Ian Murphy

Major parties tell you to tighten your belt, so the corporate pigs may feast

I’m fed up with Democrat and Republican lies. One of those lies? That it’s time America had an “adult conversation” about our budget and the deficit. The conversation goes like this: Our country’s broke and we, the people, have to reduce our living standard to pay for corporate greed.

Of course, they’d never use that kind of honest language. But throughout the land workers are being denied their collective bargaining rights, social programs are on the chopping block — even children are being kicked off of food stamps! At the same time, insanely wealthy corporations who should pay their fair share, often pay no taxes at all. Continue reading →

Ian Murphy - Murphy Can Has Congress | VIDEO | Mediaite #p2 #wiunion #mounion

Ian Murphy - Murphy Can Has Congress | VIDEO | Mediaite

The Bizarre Congressional Campaign Video You Really Need To See Today

by Mark Joyella

If you don’t surf over to the Buffalo Beast, you may not immediately know the editor, Ian Murphy. But you probably know some of his work as a satirist and political troublemaker, such as his now notorious prank call on Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, where Murphy pretended to be David Koch. What’s Murphy been doing over the last few weeks? Filing the paperwork to run as the Green Party candidate for Congress in New York’s 26th District, which is having a special election to fill the seat vacated by “Craigslist Congressman” Chris Lee.

Murphy has produced perhaps the most entertaining political campaign video of the year, sitting by a fire in a comfy sweater and proceeding to say all the kinds of things candidates don’t usually say. The video, which

Deadline near in DPS recall effort | EdNewsColorado

Deadline near in DPS recall effort

by Charlie Brennan

Critics of Denver Public Schools board president Nate Easley say they’ll turn in thousands of signatures by the close of business Tuesday, meeting a deadline to trigger a recall election likely in June.

Denver Public Schools students at a recent rally

Both sides in the recall effort say the education of DPS students is the top concern.

Recall organizer John McBride said last week that more than 5,363 signatures – the minimum needed to initiate what would be a recall election by mail – will be submitted at 3:30 p.m., beating the 5 p.m. deadline. He declined to be more specific about the number of names in hand as of Friday.

McBride said Take Back Our Schools, the political committee for which he is registered agent, still does not even have a bank account and remains a grassroots effort.

“I’ve spent a little, for some fliers,” said McBride, who is head of the Northeast Community Congress for Education. “The people doing this are all doing it out of their own pockets.”

Learn more

See where DPS board members stand on the recall

Schools Matter: More Rhee Testing Miracles Evaporate as Henderson Stonewalls

More Rhee Testing Miracles Evaporate as Henderson Stonewalls

by Jim Horn

Jack Gillum and Marisol Bello at USA Today have produced a piece of investigative journalism that is sure to win them awards for education reporting (unless Bill Gates and Eli Broad are paying for the trophies at EWA).

In looking at every angle of a long-ignored story to ferret out the facts in a testing scandal that was kept under wraps by Fenty/Rhee/Henderson, Gillum and Bello have produced a classic case study of what happens when high stakes, high pressure, and big bucks corrupt social policy, per Campbell's Law, which states that

"The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: How Deasy will decide who's a good teacher

How Deasy will decide who's a good teacher

Here's his value-added formula

Want to know how L.A.'s incoming supt. John Deasy (the man from Gates) is going to sort good teachers from bad? How he's going to decide who get fired and who stays? Who has their careers destroyed? Who will get paid? How much?

It's all right here:

'Value-added' teacher evaluations: L.A. Unified tackles a tough formula - latimes.com

'Value-added' teacher evaluations: L.A. Unified tackles a tough formula

Los Angeles school district leaders are poised to plunge ahead with their own confidential 'value-added' ratings this spring, saying the approach is far more objective and accurate than any other evaluation tool available, despite its complexity.

John Deasy, incoming superintendent of schools in Los Angeles, says of the change: “We are not questing for perfect. We are questing for much better.” (Irfan Khan, Los Angeles Times / March 28, 2011)

By Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times

March 28, 2011

E-mail
Print
Share
Text Size

In Houston, school district officials introduced a test score-based evaluation system to determine teacher bonuses, then — in the face of massive protests — jettisoned the formula after one year to devise a better one.

In New York, teachers union officials are fighting the public release of ratings for more than 12,000 teachers, arguing that the estimates can be drastically wrong.

Despite such controversies, Los Angeles school district leaders are poised to plunge ahead with their

This Week In Education: AM News: Districts Hiring Failed Principals To Run Turnarounds

AM News: Districts Hiring Failed Principals To Run Turnarounds

by Alexander Russo

Ousted principals quickly find new education jobs AP: It didn't take long for Ev Arnold to land on his feet, though: The same district now pays him the identical salary to oversee the school's turnaround... 'Value-added' teacher evaluations: L.A. Unified tackles a tough formula LAT: In Houston, school district officials introduced a test score-based evaluation system to determine teacher bonuses, then — in the face of massive protests — jettisoned the formula after one year to devise a better one... As Student Absenteeism Rises, a Charter School Fights Back CNC: At the Chicago Talent Development Charter School, the administration and staff are trying different tactics to fight a citywide problem of student

What’s in your emails? The American thought police. « Fred Klonsky's blog

What’s in your emails? The American thought police.

by Fred Klonsky

NY Times columnist and Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman nails it this morning. In a column on the William Cronon Affair and the right-wing’s assault on teachers’ associations and beliefs, he writes:

So we don’t need to worry about Mr. Cronon — but we should worry a lot about the wider effect of attacks like the one he’s facing.
Legally, Republicans may be within their rights: Wisconsin’s open records law provides public access to e-mails of government employees, although the law was clearly intended to apply to state officials, not university professors. But there’s a clear chilling effect when scholars know that they may face witch hunts whenever they say things the G.O.P. doesn’t like.
Someone like Mr. Cronon can stand up to the pressure. But less eminent and

Cheating fears cast doubt on Rhee’s legacy in DC public schools | Jay Bookman

Cheating fears cast doubt on Rhee’s legacy in DC public schools

7:49 am March 28, 2011, by Jay

Michelle Rhee, former chancellor of public schools in Washington, D.C., became a conservative star of sorts for her willingness to take on the teachers’ union and the education establishment, among other things by firing teachers whose students did not improve on standardized testing. As chancellor, Rhee also instituted a lucrative bonus program for teachers and principals at schools that did show significant improvement.

The policy change had an effect; standardized scores rose significantly during Rhee’s three-year tenure. Eventually, however, her brash, combative style contributed to the re-election defeat of her most important champion, Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty, and last year Rhee was forced to resign as DC chancellor.

However, that career setback conferred martyr status on Rhee, who launched a nationwide speaking tour to spread her message of reform. Earlier this year, she was welcomed at the

Latest News and Comment from Education

Monday, March 28, 2011