Tuesday, June 28, 2011

The problem with how we evaluate success in ed reform - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

The problem with how we evaluate success in ed reform

This was written by Matthew Di Carlo, senior fellow at the non-profit Albert Shanker Institute, located in Washington, D.C. This postoriginally appeared on the institute’s blog.

By Matthew Di Carlo

In the mid-1990s, after a long and contentious debate, the U.S. Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, which President Clinton signed into law. It is usually called the “Welfare Reform Act,” as it effectively ended the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program (which is what most people mean when they say “welfare,” even though it was [and its successor is] only a tiny part of our welfare state). Established during the New Deal, AFDC was mostly designed to give assistance to needy young children (it was later expanded to include support for their

13 Ways of looking at breakfast for schoolchildren -- *This piece on school breakfasts was written by Jill Davidson, managing director of the Coalition of Essential Schools, and was published in the July issue of the East Side Monthly as well as on Davidson’s blog. * Read full article >>

Cool Cat Teacher Blog: If you're at #iste11 and Serious about Global Collaboration: Today at 5pm

If you're at #iste11 and Serious about Global Collaboration: Today at 5pm Today, Tuesday, at 5pm in Rm PACC 123, Julie Lindsay will be leading a birds of a feather designed to help schools find each other and begin global collaboration. Flat Classroom Conference 2009 Doha, Qatar The audience will be peppered with our ...

Daily Education & Technology News for Schools 06/28/2011 - Create a Facebook Page | Custom Fan Page Design - Pagemodo If you are a school and need help with your facebook page, this may be the option. Every school should have a facebook page in addition to your website. ...

A Quick Reminder from Philly « Cooperative Catalyst

A Quick Reminder from Philly I step outside the ed tech echo chamber and wander around Philadelphia with Javi the Hippie. We stop at random locations, breathing in the art, letting it cleanse us from the buzzing white noise of a techno-conference. Some cities keep their art in ...

definitely normal? My daughter asks Google to define success via her cell phone. Twenty seconds and her phone spits out the following: Perhaps we could take heed. Are we keeping from things that matter because we’re afraid to allow for no ...

Clarence Thomas Thinks Teenagers Have No Free Speech Rights « Student Activism

Clarence Thomas Thinks Teenagers Have No Free Speech Rights

by Angus Johnston

1 person liked this

Yesterday the Supreme Court struck down a California law banning the sale of certain video games to children without their parents’ consent, and Justice Clarence Thomas disagreed. In a long and history-heavy dissent, he argued that minors properly have no First Amendment rights to read or view anything that their parents have not consented to let them access.

Strikingly, though, his dissent went even further, arguing that in early America — and thus, by his reading of the

NYC Educator: You're Not Graduating After All, Sorry about That Scholarship

You're Not Graduating After All, Sorry about That Scholarship

by Miss Eyre

One does not become an education blogger in New York City without having the stomach for some depressing stories. Today, for example, I was all set to write a happy-go-lucky "Hey, it's the LAST DAY OF SCHOOL!!!!!!!" post and wish you all a happy summer vacation. But that was before I switched on the news in the wee hours of the morning (for the last time until September, I do hope) and heard this story.

You see, the graduating class of Performance Conservatory High School in the Bronx (all 23 of them, which I imagine is a problem in and of itself) was short 9 of its members yesterday. These 9 members were informed that they would not be graduating yesterday morning. How did this happen? Bureaucratic incompetence? Apathy or ignorance on the part of guidance and administration? We don't know yet, and naturally an investigation is pending. But as a teacher, I have to admit that I'm just as confused as the kids involved. One young lady said she had 48 credits and 5 Regents exams, which, to me, sounds like she met the graduation requirements.

This would be bad enough if it had happened in, say, April. If some kind of mix-up had transpired a couple of

What's the NCEE's Problem with Agassi et al.? :: Frederick M. Hess

What's the NCEE's Problem with Agassi et al.?

by Frederick M. Hess • Jun 28, 2011 at 8:13 am
Cross-posted from Education Week

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Andre Agassi, the former tennis champ and high school dropout, and Canyon Capital Realty Advisors, recently announced the creation of a real estate fund that will spend $500 million to capitalize on and promote the movement for U.S. charter schools. The Canyon-Agassi Charter School Facilities Fund plans to develop more than 75 urban campuses with space for about 40,000 students over three to four years, according to a statement from Canyon Capital and Agassi Ventures LLC. The partners already have drawn investments from Citigroup, Intel, and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

I had the opportunity to meet Agassi a few months back in Vegas and was terrifically impressed. I found him smart, thoughtful, humble, and interested in listening; in truth, I found him a whole lot more impressive than any number of education officials, experts, consultants, and professors that I've encountered. Having a smart, wildly successful, internationally regarded tennis champ pouring his passion into launching great schools would seem

Schools Matter: Brooklyn Ascend Brought to Earth by Former Teacher, Part 3

Brooklyn Ascend Brought to Earth by Former Teacher, Part 3

by Jim Horn

In this email, Emily Kennedy recounts what happened at the Brooklyn Ascend's abusive testing sweatshop during what was supposed to be Spring Break, 2011:

Spring Break Academy

In the months leading up to the state exam, we began to hear about the need to target our “bubble kids.” In New York State, a child needs to score a 3 on the state exam in order to be considered “proficient.” The “bubble kids” were those who had demonstrated that they were close to achieving proficient scores, or had indeed scored 3’s on mock exams (which we gave out each month) but not by enough points that we could feel confident they would pass the real test in May. These were the kids, we were told, that we really needed to “zero in on.”

And so the school came up with a plan to have these kids come in over their spring vacation for “Spring Break Academy,” so that they wouldn’t “slip” during this time. To me, the idea sounded cruel. After

Updates to the CA School Funding Map Tool, May 15-June 15, 2011

by cynthia

UPDATE as of June 12, 2011: Governor Brown says there’ll be a vote on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 in the legislature on tax extension and the budget come hell or high water.

Governor Jerry Brown: June 15 Deadline for CA Budget Vote

Go to the California School Funding Map Tool here.

If you haven’t called any of the people who live in areas represented by Republican holdouts, here’s why Monday and Tuesday are do-or-die for calls: the first-draft maps for State Senate, Assembly, and Congressional seats have come out. Find out how redistricting will impact you here. Hard-core conservatives will not fare well. The LA Times, in analyzing the impact of redistricting on the state’s GOP, has this to say (quoting GOP advisers

Teaching in Turnaround Schools: Second Time Around | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Teaching in Turnaround Schools: Second Time Around

by larrycuban

As I approach the second anniversary of my blog, I will be returning to particular posts in the past 24 months that hit themes I believe are important in reform and classroom practice. In presenting the post again, I will update facts in an introduction to the post and then make a few comments.

This post originally appeared August 11, 2009. Rafe Esquith continues to teach, Sarah Fine is no longer teaching. The questions I ask here are ones that I have mentioned numerous times over the past two years as crucial for anyone who makes, adopts, and implements policy–that means school boards, superintendents, legislators, principals, and teachers–to answer.

Lots of stories from principals, parents, and students reveal practices that range from marvelous to malign. Individual teachers give us a sense of what happens in their classrooms. Rafe Esquith in LA writes about his lessons and his kids’ experiences in an elementary school; Sarah Fine, an English teacher in a D.C. charter school, tells of her successes and failures. But beyond stories and first-hand accounts, helpful as they are in

Daily Kos: Proof we do NOT have the world's best health care system

Proof we do NOT have the world's best health care system

by rss@dailykos.com (teacherken)

can been seen in one basic fact:

in the US life expectancy for both men in women puts the US in 37th place in the world, with that for women dropping in much of the country.

That immediately grabbed my attention as I read Living longer? Not in US by Derrick Jackson in today's Boston Globe

There I read

Researchers at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation this month published a county-by-county analysis of life expectancy. From 1987 to 1997, there were 227 counties where female life expectancy dropped. From 1997 to 2007, the number of counties where women’s life expectancy dropped exploded to 737.

In 2,054 of the nation's 3,147 counties, life expectancies for women fell further behind the 10 nations with the

Let’s Get It Right After Ackerman Leaves « City School Stories

Notes from the Field « City School Stories

Notes from the Field

by fmurphy

Let’s Get It Right After Ackerman Leaves

Submitted by Frank Murphy on June 28, 2011

In March of 2011, the Seattle School Board voted to terminate the contract of its Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Marie Goodloe-Johnson. This decision was made after the Board determined that Goodloe-Johnson had mismanaged a financial scandal involving a mid-level manager of the district. An audit of the district’s finances had revealed improper activity in the district’s small business contracting program.

This marked the end of the tumultuous three and half year tenure of Goodloe-Johnson in Seattle. Extensive reporting of the many controversies that swirled around this Broad Academy-trained superintendent can be found on the Seattle Education blog. This post, Ten + Reasons Why the Seattle Public Schools Superintendent, Dr. Marie Goodloe-Johnson, Should Be Fired With Cause, provides a comprehensive summary of her policy and program initiatives.

As I read this particular piece, I could not help but note the similarities between the actions of this Broad-trained

Monday, June 27, 2011

Over 400 Categorized “Theory Of Knowledge” Links | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

Over 400 Categorized “Theory Of Knowledge” Links

by Larry Ferlazzo

As regular readers know, in addition to teaching English and Social Studies classes, I teach an International Baccalaureate Theory of Knowledge course (you can see our TOK class blog here). It’s a lot of fun.

Periodically, I share TOK-related resources for other TOK teachers.

I now have over 400 Delicious links sorted into appropriate TOK categories that can be accessed here.

During the second semester of the class, we review the chapterin my book on the qualities of a good lesson, and then students — in small groups — prepare and teach short lessons to other small groups in the class. We

Teacher Evaluation System Examines Classroom Performance - NYTimes.com

Teacher Grades: Pass or Be Fired

Philip Scott Andrews/The New York Times

Mary Gloster, left, evaluated Emily Strzelecki, a first-year science teacher at a low-performing high school in Washington.

By SAM DILLON

Published: June 27, 2011

REPRINTS

WASHINGTON — Emily Strzelecki, a first-year science teacher here, was about as eager for a classroom visit by one of the city’s roving teacher evaluators as she would be to get a tooth drilled. “It really stressed me out because, oh my gosh, I could lose my job,” Ms. Strzelecki said.

Times Topic: Teachers and School Employees

Her fears were not unfounded: 165 Washington teachers were fired last year based on a pioneering evaluation system that places significant emphasis on classroom observations; next month, 200 to 600 of the city’s 4,200 educators are expected to get similar bad news, in the nation’s highest rate of dismissal for poor

L.A. Unified ditches homework : Hot Topics

L.A. Unified ditches homework

418

By Kelsey Williams, SFGate:

The Los Angeles Unified School District just released their new policy that homework will count for only 10 percent of the grade, giving students essentially a free pass to not do a thing.

While there are some lauding the approach as progressive and fair towards students whose home life and economic circumstances makes work outside of the classroom difficult, the overarching move once again takes power away from the teachers who know their student's situation better than any school supervisor could. According to the Los Angeles Times:

The L.A. approach is intended to account for the myriad urban problems facing the district's mostly low-income, minority population. It's also aimed at supporting L.A. Unified's increasing focus on boosting measureable academic achievement.
According to the new policy, "Varying degrees of access to academic support at home, for whatever reason, should not penalize a student so severely that it prevents the student from passing a class, nor should it inflate the grade." It was distributed to schools last month.

Homework, however, is not just a teacher's form of torture meant to overload students and cause

Whittier parents staging a sit-in to meet with CPS officials - chicagotribune.com

Whittier parents staging a sit-in to meet with CPS officials

By Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah, Tribune reporter

3:30 p.m. CDT, June 27, 2011

Parents staging a sit-in at Whittier Elementary School say they plan to meet with CPS officials today.

The parents, who initially sat in last fall to prevent demolition of a field house near the school and demand a library for the students, now say they don't want CPS to build a library inside the school, and prevented construction crews from working two days last week. They want CPS to build the library in the field house.

The parents also said they received a letter from CPS saying that construction crews must resume work by Tuesday or the project at the Pilsen school will not be done this summer.

On Friday, several dozen protesters forced a delay on the project's start for a second consecutive day.

About 40 parents and community activists stood near the school while the crews arrived to resume the project that began Tuesday. Shortly after they arrived Friday morning, crews left the site, deciding against a confrontation, a Chicago Public Schools official said.

"All we want is for (schools CEO Jean-Claude) Brizard to sit down and talk to us," Gema Gaete, a member of the Whittier Parents Committee, said at the time.

This morning, the group said it hoped that Brizard would be among the CPS officials at today's meeting.

Last fall, the group staged a 36-day sit-in to demand a school library and to stop CPS

Schools Matter: Media literacy, the common core standards, and the menu fallacy

Media literacy, the common core standards, and the menu fallacy

by skrashen

Beach and Baker, in Ed Week, argue that "core standards must embrace media literacy."http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/06/22/36baker.h30.html?r=813299394#comments

The question that first needs to be asked is whether we should have common core standards at all. The idea of standards seems to be innocent and common-sense, but the current movement, from the beginning, has been a means to establish national tests, which are unnecessary (we already have plenty of tests that do the job very well; in fact, we have far more than we need), and expensive (MUCH more expensive than we originally thought).

Susan Ohanian has made this analogy: Proposing standards is like giving out menus to the starving. To extend the analogy, instead of providing food, we are debating what should be on the menu.

We can discuss standards only after we protect children from the effects of poverty (no child left unfed; better health care, access to reading material).
Here is a media and information-literacy activity for all of us.
Examine Arne Duncan's speeches, especially those in which he first announced the need for

Save Our Schools

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Too poor to play? I doubt it.

Too poor to play? I doubt it.

by Mike Klonsky

As you probably know by now, there's no love lost between me and corporate reformers who dismiss poverty and racism as mere "excuses," used by apologists for failing schools and poor teaching.

But I also have difficulty understanding some otherwise well-meaning educators who look at kids growing up in poverty as if they had some incurable disease and therefore incapable of learning complex ideas or critical thinking skills. Even worse are those who assume that poor kids aren't even capable of partaking in group or play activities with each other or with other children.

I was troubled by an AP wire story by Dan Stockman which appeared in Saturday's Sun-Times as "Teaching the poorest to work, play" and which began this way:

There are no swings at Hammond’s Lafayette Elementary School. In fact, there’s almost no playground equipment at all. That’s OK, though, because they don’t really do outside recess here.

The intellectually lazy use of “status quo” | EdNewsColorado

The intellectually lazy use of “status quo”

by Sabrina Stevens Shupe

Cross-posted from the ‘Failing Schools’ blog

status quo: “the state in which”; the existing state of affairs

The education reform discussion (or debate, depending on who’s talking) is filled with buzzwords and terms, most of which (like “accountability” and “reform”) are meant to sound positive, so that we choose to agree with the speaker. (“Well, I believe in holding people accountable for their actions, so yes, I’m for an accountability movement.”) We know that many of these fall apart under closer scrutiny, but at least there’s an attempt to win skeptics over by appealing to commonly shared values.

But some terms are designed to shame us into compliance with the speaker. “Status quo” is the perfect example of this.

People who regularly engage with school reform issues are well aware of the way powerful people have defined

Preview of “School Choice: Taxpayer-Funded Creationism, Bigotry, and Bias”

Preview of "School Choice: Taxpayer-Funded Creationism, Bigotry, and Bias"

by Rachel Tabachnick

The video below is a short preview of the 34-minute video “School Choice: Taxpayer-Funded Creationism, Bigotry, and Bias.” Private schools receiving funding through “school choice” programs are using A Beka Book, Bob Jones University Press, and other Protestant fundamentalist curricula. The textbooks in these series teach that dinosaurs lived on earth with humans; deny global warming; promote hostility toward other religions and other sectors of Christianity (particularly Roman Catholicism); provide a biased and often factually incorrect version of history; and teach extreme laissez-faire economics, claimed to be biblically-based.

The full length video (embedded at end of article) focuses on the state of Pennsylvania and its Education Improvement Tax Credit program or EITC, the oldest and second largest corporate tax credit program in the country. Pennsylvania was the site of Kitzmiller v. Dover, which unfolded in 2005 in the full glare of the press. Meanwhile an end run has been made around this case and other well-publicized battles over curriculum. The

Fraud & abuse in FL voucher schools « Failing Schools

Fraud & abuse in FL voucher schools

JUNE 27, 2011

by Sabrina

I nearly vomited while reading the Miami New Times’ account of some of the horrors taking place in Florida’s poorly regulated voucher school system, under the McKay scholarship program that gives tuition vouchers to special needs students. Abuses like these are a prime example of why it is so important to have a robust, healthy public school system, with real oversight by officials who are directly accountable to the public. De-regulating that system doesn’t typically encourage innovation, as privatization proponents argue; at best, most of these schools do no better than the schools they’re with which they’re meant to compete. But often, de-regulation does encourage fraud. (According to the article, administrators receiving tax-payer funds for voucher schools include “criminals convicted of cocaine dealing, kidnapping, witness

Save Our Schools March & National Call to Action, July 30, 2011

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