nydailynews.com - Susana Bates for News The Tweed Courthouse at 52 Chambers St. in lower Manhattan where the Department of Education is headquartered. Another day, another outrageous consultant scandal at the Depart...
chicagotribune.com - The outgoing board of Chicago Public Schools approved the appointment of the city's newest schools chief for an initial annual salary of $250,000 on Wednesday at a meeting marked by farewells and h...
gatesfoundation.org - In a story published on May 22, 2011, the New York Times examined the foundation’s education advocacy grantmaking. This blog post helps provide context for that article. The reporting behind the st...
huffingtonpost.com - Please meet Ginger Claar.Ginger is a wife and loving mother of an 18-month-old son. Ginger played basketball professionally in Amsterdam and now coaches the girls' team at the local middle school. ...
nepc.colorado.edu - Review of: Passing Muster: Evaluating Teacher Evaluation Systems by Steven Glazerman, Dan Goldhaber, Susanna Loeb, Stephen Raudenbush, Douglas O. Staiger, and Grover J. Whitehurst Brookings Institu...
blogs.forbes.com - May. 25 2011 - 9:32 pm | 0 views | 0 recommendations | By E.D. KAIN Betsy DeVos with supporter (Image via Wikipedia)Zaid Jilani has a long piece up on the deep pockets influencing education reform....
thejosevilson.com - To Whom This May Concern: Anytime I get the opportunity to score the New York State Mathematics Exam, whether as scoring leader, table leader, or part of the scoring team, I try to ingest the super...
radioboston.wbur.org - (super.heavy/Flickr) On Monday, we talked about what makes a great teacher. Wednesday, the flip-side: bad teachers, what impact they have and the challenge of removing them. As part of WBUR’s Makin...
preaprez.wordpress.com - Early Wednesday word was circulating that Tom Cross and Mike Madigan didn’t have the votes to move the pension bill out of committee. All committee meetings listed on the House schedule had been ca...
huffingtonpost.com - Rush Limbaugh's ratings have fallen sharply in recent months, according to a new report by Arbitron.Limbaugh still has the top-rated radio talk show in the country, but his audience has dropped by ...
preaprez.wordpress.com - Last year they passed a two-tier pension plan in the Illinois legislature in 12 hours. No discussion. No debate. Teachers hired after January one of this year will need to work 44 years in order to...
chicagobreakingnews.com - Greenpeace activists climb the smokestack at the Fisk power plant in the Pilsen neighborhood Tuesday. (Heather Charles, Chicago Tribune / May 24, 2011) Staff report 11:55 a.m. CDT, May 24, 2011 Eig...
suntimes.com - SUN-TIMES MEDIA WIRE May 24, 2011 10:48AM Greenpeace activist Kelly Mitchell on the Fisk Generating Station, 1111 W. Cermak, smokestack Tuesday, May 24, 2011. | Greenpeace photo Eight Greenpeace ac...
hispanicallyspeakingnews.com - Published at 12:23 am, May 26, 2011 Photo Credits: National Chavez Center as Historic Landmark The nine-member California Historic Resources Commission voted on May 19 to nominate the National Chav...
guardian.co.uk - Fielding doesn't fancy being an exam invigilator and having to see 'those tortured little faces'. Photograph: Antonio Olmos It's the dread exam season.Do I want to be an invigilator?To perk up the ...
history.nasa.gov - National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA History Office The Decision to Go to the Moon: President John F. Kennedy's May 25, 1961 Speech before a Joint Session of Congress On May 25, 1961,...
dailycensored.com - Believing is better than asking questions, or so says the ruling class and their lap dogs. Appealing to irrationality instead of rationality is an old sophist trick refined by Edward Bernays, the ...
suntimes.com - BY DAVID ROEDER Business Reporter/droeder@suntimes.com May 26, 2011 05:06AM Four investment banks are costing the Chicago Public Schools $35.9 million in annual interest payments tied to so-called ...
nytimes.com - The nation’s overall education spending grew at a slower pace in 2009 than at any other time in more than a decade, amid deepening state fiscal woes and flatter tax revenues, according to new censu...
sacramentopress.com - Hundreds of Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) residential and commercial customers will soon be able to take advantage of generous rebates to help pay for comprehensive energy efficiency...
politico.com - More active-duty soldiers and veterans have died from suicide than from combat wounds over the last two years — and Congress wants to know why the VA hasn’t done more to prevent it.The Senate Veter...
suntimes.com - By ROSALIND ROSSI Education Reporter/rrossi@suntimes.com May 25, 2011 07:56PM Chicago’s “Breakfast in the Classroom” program is serving “dessert” for breakfast, tempting kids who have already eaten...
hispanicallyspeakingnews.com - Estudio define a los cambios dietรฉticos, no a la pรฉrdida de peso, como el factor clave.Perder peso podrรญa no ser necesario para reducir el riesgo de diabetes, expone un estudio reciente.En cambio, ...
bigeducationape.blogspot.com - This Week In Education: Funders: Zuckerberg Wants To Educate K-8 Kids--On FacebookFunders: Zuckerberg Wants To Educate K-8 Kids--On Facebookby Alexander RussoSeemingly little noted by most of the r...
bigeducationape.blogspot.com - LAUSD - The Making of a Trojan Horse by Mark Hemphill (LAUSD - La realizaciรณn de un caballo de Troya por Mark Hemphill) - Perdaily.comLAUSD - The Making of a Trojan Horse by Mark Hemphill (LAUSD - ...
bigeducationape.blogspot.com - School Tech Connect: Illinois Is Going Down A Very Bad RoadIllinois Is Going Down A Very Bad RoadI'd love to write about something else other than trouble, but we're now fighting for our lives here...
politico.com - More active-duty soldiers and veterans have died from suicide than from combat wounds over the last two years — and Congress wants to know why the VA hasn’t done more to prevent it.The Senate Veter...
Last year they passed a two-tier pension plan in the Illinois legislature in 12 hours. No discussion. No debate. Teachers hired after January one of this year will need to work 44 years in order to receive 60% of what they would have received as a benefit.
Note: Illinois teachers receive no Social Security benefits.
The current legislative session ends May 31st.
GOP House leader, Tom Cross, known as the “House member to the insurance industry,” has struck a deal with Democratic Party boss Mike Madigan. They have created, at the behest of the Civic Committee, a three-tier
Here are recommendations made by a coalition of organizations called the Forum for Educational Accountabilityto help guide Congress — should it be willing to listen — in any rewrite of of the flawed law known as No Child Left Behind. The forum is chaired by the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, or FairTest, a nonprofit organization dedicated to stopping misuse of standardized tests.
The forum’s recommendations are aimed at improving student learning, enhancing equity and giving educators support while establishing authentic assessment and accountability.
Did you know that a clerical error led Congress to fund public schools, accidentally, at a level that would be sufficient to properly educate all children? Both Republicans and Democrats were appalled by the mistake, with the Speaker of the House being quoted as saying, “It could take a whole generation to cancel out the effects of this.” Here is the exclusive story from The Onion, the hilarious satirical publication, which will give you a good laugh (amid all the gloomy education news).
OpEd News: How the Koch Brothers Mess With the Texas Environment*-By Mary Bell Lockhart * *May 22, 2011-* Remember the old saying "What's good for business is good for Texas?" Well, maybe that old saw just won't cut it anymore. The "Billionaire Brothers Koch" apparently think not only what's good for business in ...
Mother Jones: Waxman Targets the Koch Brothers*-By Kate Sheppard* *May 23, 2011-* What do the infamous Koch brothers have to do with the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which, if approved, would run 1,661 miles from Alberta, Canada to Texas, carrying 900,000 barrels of oil from Canada's tar ...
Koch Is Not It*-Originally blogged by Knute Rife on The Business Law Spot* *May 18, 2011*- I'm brewing up a series of entries over the next few days, but I'll start with this: Late last year, a group of merry pranksters issued a fake press release satirizing Koch ...
Brave New Foundation: Tell Secretary Clinton to Say No to the KochsSecretary of State Hillary Clinton has the ability to stop Koch Industries, Inc. from profiting off a pipeline that would carry the dirtiest oil on Earth through six states, one of America's most important aquifers and almost 2,000 miles of ...
The Wall Street/Charter School Connection written+Posted by Paul Rosenberg , Article from speakeasy/alternet.org | http://bit.ly/knvbA9 This post first appeared on Open Left. | http://bit.ly/kLnaWc May 9, 2010 - In America, conservatives couldn’t kill the welfare state because it was too popular, so they decided to re-purpose it for conservative ends. These are their stories. If
That may seem like an odd question. Perhaps you think I am talking about the tax deductible nature of contributions to religious organizations and schools. One could make the argument that such is a tax subsidization of religious views with which one disagreses, but we have a well established pattern of allowing such offsets without regard to the religious beliefs thus supported.
But what about vouchers? What if we use tax dollars to give vouchers to families who then have complete freedom to pick a school for their children? Will not those vouchers help pay for textbooks whose contents might be objectionable to many?
The operable Supreme Court decision, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, 536 U.S. 639 (2002), comes from the voucher
Rocketship Education, the charter organization whose hybrid online/classroom model has drawn national attention and foundation dollars, wants the Santa Clara County Office of Education to let it open 20 more elementary schools, primarily in its hometown of San Jose, in the next seven years. Together with the three schools now operating and six already approved, Rocketship [...]
Thoughts from a Weis-man A few days after the May revise last week, we reported on a budget forum in San Jose sponsored by the Silicon Valley Education Foundation. In his opening remarks, Santa Clara County School Superintendent Chuck Weis delivered a blunt assessment of California’s public school financing over the past 40 years. He noted [...]
Picture of Harvard University Part One I have been following the cascading financial crisis with some interest especially as it pertains to the business of higher education — and what a business it is! The Wall Street ‘crisis’, or bankster fraud, has not only changed the economic geography of Wall Street, housing, credit, health [...]
source: Carl Herman, Examiner.com I wrote an analogy in 2009 of what the world would look like to Americans if the relationship of the US to Iran were switched to the US having Iran’s position and China having the US position. I’m re-printing the article below to help Americans understand the Orwellian nature of US [...]
Terapia infantil: ¿Quรฉ hacer con las rabietas?4 mayo, 2011 por Psicรณlogos Bonnet Entre las conductas que mรกs preocupan a los padres se encuentran las temidas rabietas: cuando el niรฑo se tira al suelo y se pone a llorar, ya sea en casa, en la calle o en el supermercado. Para estos casos la ...
Los colegios Montessori: una alternativa a la educaciรณn tradicional29 abril, 2011 por Psicรณlogos Bonnet *El mรฉtodo educativo tradicional se muestra carente de atenciรณn hacia aspectos tan importantes en la vida de un niรฑo como: su autoestima, autoconfianza, autocontrol, trabajo en grupo, resoluciรณn de problemas, ...
Terapia infantil: La teorรญa de la coacciรณn de Patterson: una forma de manipulaciรณn infantil30 abril, 2011 por Psicรณlogos Bonnet Dicha teorรญa da cuenta del origen de los patrones disociales en los niรฑos. Patterson, tras observar de forma natural a niรฑos de poblaciones clรญnicas llegรณ a la conclusiรณn de que la agresiรณn aparecรญa asociada a ...
This blog has been following Education Nation quite closely, out of a great curiosity regarding this latest big-media venture into education coverage. We’ve run a few blog posts about the Teacher Town Hall meeting, and will soon run a guest blog post about a panel NBC called “Job One.”
Education Nation also has a couple of guest blog posts on its site, and the difference between the two posts offers clear evidence of why educators look askance at some outside “experts” – people whose expertise in policy, politics, business or statistics has been taken as expertise in students, teachers, and classrooms – however unwarranted that assumption may be.
If you don't get back on the phone tomorrow morning--- at the start of the day--- then in my humble opinion you should go directly into a no-match 401k.
Out where I'm working, we got organized, and faxed out 263 individual letters to our representatives and tomembers of the pension committee. This is from just one building, mind you. I expect to double that number tomorrow, and I'm going to recommend that we follow-up with phone messages, as well as a faxed, group-signed message to the governor.
Somewhere on the pension committee, there's at least one Democrat who has flipped and is working with
(For a national view of public education reform see the end of this blog post)
If you're expecting a retelling of Homer's Iliad here, you're going to be disappointed. For that I'd suggest the local library where any number of translations are available to help you wade through all ten thousand ponderously repetitive lines. Or maybe you could rent that awful movie with Brad Pitt. No, this is all rather about supposed reformers in public education, the politicians who support such well publicized reformers, and the "liberal press" which stands behind them. But I promise you that we'll get back to that Trojan Horse before it's all over.
Let's start briefly here with statement about the political party which always boasts of the need for reform in
(For a national view of public education reform see the end of this blog post)
The problem with most opposition to the corrupt practices of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is that it exclusively manifests itself in responding to the latest outrageous behavior of LAUSD in a never ending series of improper action put forth by the district, instead of taking a more proactive approach that requires these brazen morally compromised folks who run the 2nd largest school district in the country to respond and be held accountable for their actions.
If you don't get back on the phone tomorrow morning--- at the start of the day--- then in my humble opinion you should go directly into a no-match 401k.
Out where I'm working, we got organized, and faxed out 263 individual letters to our representatives and to members of the pension committee. This is from just one building, mind you. I expect to double that number tomorrow, and I'm going to recommend that we follow-up with phone messages, as well as a faxed, group-signed message to the governor.
Somewhere on the pension committee, there's at least one Democrat who has flipped and is working with Madigan to destroy public education. Whoever this person is, he or she is about to earn a very motivated, very organized, very socially networked campaigner who will work for almost anyone willing to primary the pension-busters.
I'd really like to know what goes on down in a place like Plainfield, where Tom Cross is from (Cross is apparently the person pulling the strings here). I mean, at some point, there are almost certainly people in this organization that voted for Cross-- and that's their right. Are these people accepting the extra responsibility that comes
The best indicator of a state’s progress in math and reading are the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). This is considered the “gold-standard” of tests. The assessments include some multiple choice tests, but also include many open-response items that require students to show their work and arrive at the correct answer rather than eliminating choices on multiple-choice items.
Texas made tremendous gains on the NAEP mathematics tests in the 1990s, especially the 4th grade mathematics test. Indeed, Texas was repeatedly singled out as a leader in education reform because of these large gains. Grissmer and Flanagan (1999) studied Texas and determined that reduced class sizes, business community support, and an accountability system that disaggregated scores by race/ethnicity and student socio-economic status were largely responsible for these gains. At the Brookings Institute symposium on statewide progress, Dr.Uri Treisman and I (2000) also argued that the increased equity in the school finance system also helped drive improvement.
But what happened since then? Are we still making progress? Commissioner Robert Scott often touts that our students are ranked at or near the top of their peers when compared to other states in the nation. Indeed, this is
Zaid Jilani has a long piece up on the deep pockets influencing education reform. Jilani argues that the money being spent by a host of billionaires and education reform philanthropic organizations is having a pernicious influence on the education reform debate, and is leading toward the privatization of public schools.
This rapid expansion of voucher programs — which undermine and undercut public education by funnelling taxpayer money to private schools — is remarkable. After all, vouchers have been unpopular with the American public. Between 1966 and 2000, vouchers were put up for a vote in states 25 times, and voters rejected the program 24 of those times.
Certainly vouchers remain unpopular across the American electorate, as Jilani points out, whereas charters have
The field of early childhood education (ECE) is riddled with contradictions. Bluntly, when those we love the most—our children—are at the most consequential stage of their cognitive, social, and emotional development, we leave them in the hands of the people we pay the least. According to the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, for example, childcare workers earn about 4 percent less than animal caretakers—$20,940 and $21,830 per year, respectively.
I am far from the first to make this embarrassing comparison; more than a decade ago, Marci Whitebookprovided an extensive overview. Unfortunately, the comparisons still hold.
Over the intervening years, there have been many determined efforts to regulate and improve the working conditions of early childhood educators, including raising the qualifications and wages for the profession. Indeed, the demand for worthy salaries is often discussed in combination with workforce development efforts. In other words, we want early childhood workers to be both better trained and better paid. While this may seem to be a
Early Wednesday word was circulating that Tom Cross and Mike Madigan didn’t have the votes to move the pension bill out of committee. All committee meetings listed on the House schedule had been cancelled through Friday.
Then by late afternoon everything had changed.
According to Greg Hinz at Crains, a House vote is now scheduled for 9AM Thursday morning.
Under the proposal as filed by House Republican Leader Tom Cross, workers covered by five state pension plans and various municipal retirement systems would keep all benefits they have earned to date but pay far more for benefits accrued in the future. Or they could pay less but get less than than they do today.
A spokesman for House Speaker Michael Madigan, who has talked regularly to Mr. Cross about the bill, said he believes the bill has the speaker’s support.
“I think we’ve made a lot of progress on pensions in the past couple of years,” the spokesman said. “We are going farther in that direction.”
Specifically, workers who were on the payroll before this year would have one of three choices.
1) Stay in the current system, but contribute 3.75% to 8% more as a share of salary, depending on the system. Judges would pay 23% more as a share of salary. The employer contribution generally would remain at 6% of salary. Employee figures would be adjusted after three years.
2) Accept the same sort of reduced benefits and higher retirement ages that were mandated for new workers hired after Jan. 1. In exchange, workers would contribute about what they do now, generally 6% or 7% of pay.
3) Enter a self-managed pension plan that would work much like a 401(k). Each side would contribute 6% of pay.
Overall, the proposal resembles one first advanced by the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club, a big business group. In addition to the state workers and teachers statewide, it could cover non-sworn Chicago employees — not police or firefighters — plus most workers for Cook County, Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Park District.
Unions are strongly opposed.
“Teachers, police and other public employees work hard and play by the rules, but now the politicians want to change those rules and tell public employees they lost the game,” said a statement from AFSCME. “It’s the politicians who for years recklessly neglected to make contributions required by law.”
Proponents of the measure say that, rightly or not, the state no longer can afford to incur pension debt at the current rate, given the more than $60 billion in unfunded liability in the state’s employee pension funds.
One big question that is unanswered so far is how much transition costs would be for switching to a new system. That has been a big concern of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. But the city is included in the bill, so I presume that matter has been resolved.
With the support of Mr. Madigan and Mr. Cross, the bill seems likely to pass the House. But while Senate President John Cullerton reportedly has agreed to allow the bill to come for a vote in his chamber, he says reducing pensions for those already on the payroll would violate the Illinois Constitution.
The measure, SB 512, is scheduled to come up for a vote in a House committee at 9 a.m. on Thursday.
It has recently come to my attention that I may not be representing myself accurately on this blog. People who know me in real life have recently suggested that my writing here is significantly more angry and vitriolic than they'd expect. This concerns me.
It is true that I am angry, disgusted, and horrified by a lot of what I learn about education politics. On the other hand, I try desperately to keep an open mind. I continually attack my own beliefs (in my head) and try to consider others' arguments. However, it may be the case that the tone I often take on this blog gives first-time readers the wrong impression about who I am and what I stand for.
There seems to be something unique about the act of blogging in that the entirety blog (especially blogs that have any sort of personal tone to them) often provides necessary context for individual posts. There are some
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