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Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Big Education Ape: 4-6-11 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
lilysblackboard.org - Ah, where to begin this tale? I was in the ladies’ room in the airport. Honestly, I was minding my own business. Honestly, I wasn’t eavesdropping on the next stall. On purpose. Honestly, this is wh...

tbfurman
gothamschools.org - At least half a dozen major city school districts are combing the country for new superintendents — and they’re frequently looking to administrators who cut their teeth working under former New Yor...

coopmike48
palmbeachpost.com - By Dara KamPalm Beach Post Staff WriterUpdated: 6:42 p.m. Tuesday, April 5, 2011 Posted: 6:36 p.m. Tuesday, April 5, 2011TALLAHASSEE — Florida children could spend more time interacting with a comp...

DianeRavitch
blogs.edweek.org - Dear Deborah,I am sure you recall that when No Child Left Behind was under discussion, there was a great deal of publicity about "the Texas Miracle." I remember newspaper accounts of the wonders th...

DianeRavitch
change.org - President Obama, Save Our Schools Greetings, President Obama, On March 28, 2011, you said the following: "... we have piled on a lot of standardized tests on our kids. Malia and Sasha, my two daugh...

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coopmike48 Fla. teachers union seeking class size compromise - Florida Wires - MiamiHerald.com - http://goo.gl/FTEl3about 1 minute ago · reply · retweet · favorite

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coopmike48 America's youths deserve system that truly leaves no child behind | Burlington Free Press | burlingtonfreepress.com -http://goo.gl/9K7No37 seconds ago · reply · retweet · favorite

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coopmike48 The importance of unions The Daily Collegian - http://goo.gl/sdchQ5 minutes ago · reply · retweet · favorite

#edu Read this paper55 MORE ARTICLES
bigeducationape.blogspot.com - New tests for students with disabilities have wider implications | Thoughts on Public EducationTime for Brown to hit the road - by John Fensterwald - Educated Guess Gov. Jerry Brown is betting that...

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bigeducationape.blogspot.com - “4 Free Photos” | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...“4 Free Photos” 4 Free Photos is another website that offers a good selection of public domain images. I’m adding it to The Best Online Sour...

coopmike48
bigeducationape.blogspot.com - 4LAKids - some of the news that doesn't fit: IN THE BASEMENT OF THE IVORY TOWER: An Academic Hit Man Brings More Bad NewsIN THE BASEMENT OF THE IVORY TOWER: An Academic Hit Man Brings More Bad News...

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Education130 MORE ARTICLES
origin.nydailynews.com - Mayor Bloomberg couldn't give the tail end of this about his hand-picked schools chancellor's incredibly lousy poll numbers -- or so he told reporters earlier today, according to our City Hall Bure...

leoniehaimson
bigeducationape.blogspot.com - Roxanna Elden: Your Friend and Mine | Mr. Teachbad's Blog of Teacher DisgruntlementRoxanna Elden: Your Friend and Mineby mrteachbadThere is a magical book called See Me After Class: Advice for Teac...

coopmike48
csmonitor.com - As state legislatures and teachers' unions clash over budgets and reforms, Memphis shows that close cooperation of school and union officials can turn failing schools around. But each week, we sit ...

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Politics27 MORE ARTICLES
cbsnews.com - (AP) MADISON, Wis. -- The race between a conservative-leaning Wisconsin Supreme Court justice and a little-known challenger fueled by a wave of anger over the state's divisive new union rights law...

mikeklonsky
cnn.com - STORY HIGHLIGHTSAn opposition official says rebels won't accept any compromise with Gadhafi's regimeMisrata man: Children can't go to school, and dead people are buried without certificatesFormer U...

mikeklonsky
bigeducationape.blogspot.com - News | www.kochwatch.orgRep Peter DeFazio : God Forbid People Should Be Allowed To Get Together & Organize! Good Job Republicans! WATCH ON YOUTUBE:AP: Wis. court election too close to call amid ang...

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Stories14 MORE ARTICLES
bigeducationape.blogspot.com - Shanker Blog » The Elephant In The ClassroomThe Elephant In The Classroomby Esther QuinteroThe current education debate seems to have developed a laser-like focus on teaching. In response, some hav...

coopmike48
learning.blogs.nytimes.com - The La Vache family of Brooklyn has taken such good care of their 1963 Buick Wildcat coupe that all 75,745 miles it has traveled have been recorded in a diary begun the day they bought the car. Wha...

tbfurman
connectedprincipals.com - Posted by cbirk on 4/06/11 • Categorized as Best Educational Practices,Leadership Essentials,Principal Quality Standard It is the “month of AprilMayJune” (so coined because it goes so fast that it ...

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orlandosentinel.com - Florida Gov. Rick Scott ordered deep cuts Thursday to programs that serve tens of thousands of residents with Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, autism and other developmental disabilities. Though a ra...

DianeRavitch
hispanicallyspeakingnews.com - Published at 5:10 pm, April 5, 2011 Teen birth rates have decreased by 37 percent in the last two decades, though U.S. rates are up to nine times higher than in other developed countries, according...

coopmike48
news.change.org - Republicans and Democrats in Washington are going toe-to-toe over this year's budget. And if they don't find a compromise soon, the U.S. government will shut down on Friday. If that weren't drama e...

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Business1 MORE ARTICLES
nytimes.com - With tax day fast approaching, many Americans are thinking hard, and perhaps a little creatively, about finding deductions to help lower their tax bills. Nobody, after all, likes paying more taxes ...

mikeklonsky
teamsternation.blogspot.com - McDonald's will hire 50,000 people in one day on April 19. The lucky new McHires will take home an average wage of $8.30 an hour. Presuming they work 50 40-hour weeks (and that assumes holidays and...

coopmike48
firedoglake.com - Fighting to make America's millionaires more prosperous. I’ve got a better plan for returning the country to prosperity. Here it is. Withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq. Cut all defense spending by ...

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cbsnews.com - The Transocean Development Driller III, the rig responsible for drilling the main relief well at the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil wellhead, is seen on the Gulf of Mexico near the coast of Loui...

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Does Rhee really back probe of D.C. schools? | Opinion Blog | dallasnews.com

Does Rhee really back probe of D.C. schools? | Opinion Blog | dallasnews.com

Does Rhee really back probe of D.C. schools?

By

Rodger Jones/Editorial Writer

rmjones@dallasnews.com | Bio

4:36 PM on Tue., Apr. 5, 2011 |

Former Washington, D.C., schools chief Michelle Rhee now tells a TV station that she welcomes an investigation into evidence of cheating on standardized tests while she was there.

Rhee has been facing questions since a a USA Today published an investigation into widespread cheatingin D.C. schools.

Her initial reaction was this:

"It isn't surprising that the enemies of school reform once again are trying to argue that the Earth is flat and that there is no way test scores could have improved ... unless someone cheated."

One writer on the Washington Post's Education Page, in calling for subpoenas for Rhee and anyone else who can shed light on the allegations, says that Rhee had her own chance to root out cheaters but went soft. Excerpt:

My colleague Bill Turque wrote back in 2009 about an investigation into possible cheating at
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Oakland teachers propose new platform for union The Education Report

The Education Report

Oakland teachers propose new platform for union

By Katy Murphy
Wednesday, April 6th, 2011 at 12:20 am in OEA, teachers
No Comments

They call themselves Oakland Teachers for Innovative and Equitable Schooling, or Oakland TIES. Their platform (which I posted in full, below) calls for better teacher retention, a more representative union, greater teacher control over working conditions, needs-based funding allocations, and union involvement in revamping teacher evaluations.

The small group — it has five core members — has encouraged like-minded candidates to run for a seat on the Oakland Education Association’s executive board in May.

Emily Sacks, a special education teacher at Redwood Heights Elementary and Manzanita Community School, said TIES is not a splinter group, despite fears to the contrary, and that it’s not affiliated with any outside organizations. (Great Oakland

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Scary: GOP’s 2012 education priorities - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

Scary: GOP’s 2012 education priorities - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

Scary: GOP’s 2012 education priorities

By Valerie Strauss

This would be comical if it weren’t so serious.

At a time when public school district budgets are being slashed and there is a highly contentious national debate about how to reform failing schools, this is one of the three “major proposals” of the education proposals in the 2012 budget proposal released today by the Republican-led House Committee on the Budget: reviving a voucher program in Washington D.C. public schools.

Yes, you read that right.

The budget proposal, spearheaded by the committee chairman, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and called “The Path to Prosperity: Restoring

Awakening in crisis: A lesson from Japan

By Valerie Strauss

--

This post was written by Mark Phillips, professor emeritus of secondary education at San Francisco State University and author of a monthly column on education for the Marin Independent Journal.

By Mark Phillips

Most of you will recall that for a number of years U.S. education was compared unfavorably to that of the Japanese. The criterion was high achievement test scores, especially in science and math, and the conclusions were apparently clear. More rigor was needed, stricter academic discipline, more time on task, and more family emphasis

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New tests for students with disabilities have wider implications | Thoughts on Public Education

New tests for students with disabilities have wider implications | Thoughts on Public Education
Time for Brown to hit the road - by John Fensterwald - Educated Guess Gov. Jerry Brown is betting that the light he plans to shed on the state budget will produce some heat. Brown will soon launch a don’t-make-me-do-it budget tour, hoping that speaking bluntly in public will help do what negotiating in private has failed ...
New tests for students with disabilities have wider implications - by Doug McRae For the past dozen years, California has been acknowledged as having some of the highest K-12 academic standards in the nation. However, recent changes in our assessment and accountability systems suggest that these standards have been eroded for at ...
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“4 Free Photos” | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

“4 Free Photos” | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...
“4 Free Photos” 4 Free Photos is another website that offers a good selection of public domain images. I’m adding it to The Best Online Sources For Images.
This Would Be A Nice Geography Assessment The Sacramento Bee just published a series of photos titled Images of daily life around the world. It got me thinking that a nice summative geography assessment might be to have students grab images off the web that they feel accurately represents ...
“321 Meet” Seems Like A Decent Collaborative Tool 321 Meet lets you share your screen, or their screen, online, with online chat. They don’t indicate any limitation on the number of people who can participate. There isn’t any audio, though. I don’t think it’s ready to be added to The Best Online ...
Good Civil War Resources With this month marking the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War, I’m adding these resources to The Best Sites For Learning About The American Civil War: A Civil War Interactive Timeline from The New York Times 150 years later: Civil ...
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KOCH OUT News | www.kochwatch.org

News | www.kochwatch.org
Rep Peter DeFazio : God Forbid People Should Be Allowed To Get Together & Organize! Good Job Republicans! WATCH ON YOUTUBE:
AP: Wis. court election too close to call amid anger over union rights law Groups backing both candidates spend up to $400,000 a day on TV ads MADISON, Wis. — The race between a conservative-leaning Wisconsin Supreme Court justice and a little-known challenger fueled by a wave of anger over the state's divisive new union ...
Think Progress: Rep. Gerry Connolly Proposes Officially Changing Title Of Anti-EPA Bill To "Koch Brothers Appreciation Act" April 5, 2011- Weeks ago, Koch-funded climate change denying Republicans on the House Energy Committee voted unanimously in favor of the Upton-Inhofe bill to eliminate the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The ...
Newsmax.Com: Turnout Runs Unexpectedly High in Crucial Wis. Supreme Court Election *April 5, 2011-* Observers are surprised at the high voter turnout in a pivotal Wisconsin state Supreme Court election today in balloting billed as a de facto referendum on GOP Gov. Scott Walker’s fiscal austerity measures. State officials had ...
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4LAKids - IN THE BASEMENT OF THE IVORY TOWER: An Academic Hit Man Brings More Bad News

4LAKids - some of the news that doesn't fit: IN THE BASEMENT OF THE IVORY TOWER: An Academic Hit Man Brings More Bad News
IN THE BASEMENT OF THE IVORY TOWER: An Academic Hit Man Brings More Bad News book Review By DWIGHT GARNER | New York Times | http://nyti.ms/fN20xV IN THE BASEMENT OF THE IVORY TOWER: Confessions of an Accidental Academic By Professor X 258 ...
LA UNIFIED MOVES FORWARD IN PROCESS TO CLOSE CRESCENDO SCHOOLS FOR CHEATING -- Howard Blume- LA Times/LA NOW | http://lat.ms/hhZJfs April 5, 2011 | 9:07 pm - The Los Angeles Board of Education voted Tuesday to issue a formal notice of violations against each campus among a group of six South Los Angeles charter schools ...
Budget Update: SCHOOLS FACE DEVASATING CUTS! LEGISLATURE STILL HAS THE POWER TO SAVE OUR SCHOOLS. 5 April 2011 Greetings from Educate Our State: Unfortunately, late last week, our Legislature missed the deadline for a June special election vote to keep our school funding at its current level. You can watch Governor Brown’s video announcement ...
FIRST 5 AGENCIES SUE TO BLOCK $1 BILLON IN JERRY BROWN’S BUDGET Posted by Kevin Yamamura, Sacramento Bee/Capitol Alert | http://bit.ly/dIEah6 The latest on California politics and government April 5, 2011 Updated at 12:40 p.m. - A trio of First 5 agencies said Tuesday they have filed suit to block the state from ...
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School Tech Connect: Squeaker In Wisco

School Tech Connect: Squeaker In Wisco
Squeaker In Wisco Too close to call! TPM likes Kloppenburg in the recount, but right now Prosser's up by 589 votes, half of which are probably my own right-wing family! That was the most thrilling night of election returns I've ever been through.
She Knows Nothing I never met Bernie Stone, but God bless him. He's probably right. Chicago has elected a mayor who can afford to wipe out the whole checks and balances thing.
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Schools Matter: Secrets Behind the KIPP Bump, Part III: More Money

Schools Matter: Secrets Behind the KIPP Bump, Part III: More Money

Secrets Behind the KIPP Bump, Part III: More Money

by Jim Horn
This is the third of several posts with results from a widely reported new study of the KIPP phenomenon.


With the help of Fisher, Walton, Gates, Broad, and an impressive list of donors and investors from Wall Street, the KIPP empire been born. All cash given, of course, is matched by a tax credit. Here is a list of Whales from the KIPP website:

$60,000,000 and Above:
DDFF
$25,000,000-39,999,999:

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The Kids Will Tell You | The Jose Vilson

The Kids Will Tell You | The Jose Vilson

The Kids Will Tell You

by Jose


On Saturday, I had the honor of listening to eight teens from a high school in Harlem for about 1/2 an hour (it was the third of four stops that Saturday), hosted by Columbia University professor and Twitter associate Christopher Emdin. While I didn’t get a chance to sit for the whole conversation, I noticed the passion and candor from each of the students. Whoever would question our students’ ability to articulate their own needs should have sat next to me or any other member of the captive audience. These were voices unleashed, untamed, and, at times, brutal. However, I appreciated all of it because kids rarely get to express themselves in any academic setting

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Respect for Teaching: One Person’s Tale | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Respect for Teaching: One Person’s Tale | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Respect for Teaching: One Person’s Tale

by larrycuban

Amid current disrespect for teaching I recall an incident that occurred to me 40 years ago when I worked in the Washington, D.C. schools. Sure, four decades ago is ancient history so readers will have to judge whether the attitudes displayed in the incident are contemporary or merely a curiosity. I wrote the following piece for a Washington paper in 1971.

*************************************************************************************

“I have taught off and on for nearly fifteen years. When not teaching, I have been an administrator…. I directed an experimental teaching project called the Cardozo Project in Urban Teaching 1963-1967. [Afterwards] I taught half-time while writing a book. The following year, in the hope of working with others who shared my interest in [reform], I returned to administration as the Director of Staff Development in the D.C. schools. That lasted two years since the budget and program [were] gutted … by the D.C. Council…. At that point [1970] I decided to return to the classroom rather than occupy a desk [downtown].

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NYC Educator: The Perpetual Audition

NYC Educator: The Perpetual Audition

The Perpetual Audition

by NYC Educator
Today I was speaking to a relatively new teacher who expressed gratitude he had reached tenure. "I'm glad I don't have to do what Mr. Newbie has to do. He has to do a whole portfolio, with all kinds of stuff in it. What a pain in the neck."

He's right, of course. The DOE, in its infinite wisdom, decided to make a bunch of arbitrary requirements on what's needed for tenure, and if you hadn't been collecting for your portfolio the last two-and-a-half years, well, you'd better start searching those papers in your attic. Maybe there's stuff in your file you can use, but if not, you'd better get searching, or at the very least get fabricating.

But don't be so smug as you chuckle over Mr.
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Shanker Blog » The Elephant In The Classroom

Shanker Blog » The Elephant In The Classroom

The Elephant In The Classroom

by Esther Quintero

The current education debate seems to have developed a laser-like focus on teaching. In response, some have offered serious commentary; others have resorted to humor; many others have expressed outrage at the seeming myopia.

Since common sense is said to be the least common of senses and a picture is worth a thousand words, here are my 1350 words—1000 of them in illustrations.

These pictures are inspired by the Indian parable of the “Blind Men and the Elephant,” which tells the story of a king who presented an elephant to a group of blind men. After the men had explored a different part of the animal, they were asked to describe it to the king.

Those who had touched the head replied, “an elephant like a water jar.” “An elephant is just like a winnowing basket” said those who felt the ear. Those presented with the tusk said, “an elephant, your majesty, is just like a plowshare.” The men who felt the trunk answered, “an elephant… is just like a plow pole.” The men at the back said, “an elephant is just like a mortar.” Those touching the foot replied, “an elephant… is just like a post.” And

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Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Roxanna Elden: Your Friend and Mine | Mr. Teachbad's Blog of Teacher Disgruntlement

Roxanna Elden: Your Friend and Mine | Mr. Teachbad's Blog of Teacher Disgruntlement

Roxanna Elden: Your Friend and Mine

by mrteachbad

There is a magical book called See Me After Class: Advice for Teachers, by Teachers.

The author is Roxanna Elden. (Disclosure: I do not know Ms. Elden personally. I receive no commissions, etc. I just like her book.) Elden has been teaching for a long time. She is an experienced and highly accomplished teacher. You can read about Roxanna and her work and BUY THE BOOK on her website.

Reading this book, I immediately felt I had a sense of the author and that, as a teacher, she was on my side. She knows this job inside and out, and she has thought hard about it. (And she provides many anecdotes from other teachers that will make you feel a whole lot less inadequate.) But rather than just bitching and moaning, like me, she offers a fresh set of eyes on ordinary problems and recommends realistic ideas to deal with real classroom issues. She readily admits that there are no magic bullets not every idea works with every teacher’s personality. She just offers the fruits of experience and smarts to address the shit-storms that naturally occur in our classrooms every day in grade school, middle school (bless you people), and high school. It speaks to all of

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