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Thursday, September 8, 2011

Big Education Ape: 9-8-11 PM President Obama Addresses a Joint Session of Congress EDition

Big Education Ape: Ed News Now:

Published by Coopmike48 – 6 news spotters today

President Obama Addresses a Joint Session of Congress

bigeducationape.blogspot.com - The White House:Home • Photos & Videos • Live StreamsJOIN THE LIVE CHATVISIT WHITEHOUSE.GOVThere is a live discussion about this event at Facebook.Click here to participateNot a Facebook member?Cli...

coopmike48

Okla. reviews contracts after test score errors

chron.com - OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Errors reported with school test scores are the latest example of trouble Oklahoma has had with making sure its examinations of students are accurate and reliable.Pearson Educa...

DianeRavitch

Well, Rick Perry, Since You Brought Up Galileo...

motherjones.com - Rick Perry was more than happy to embrace the anti-science title in Wednesday's GOP debate, repeating the claim that the "science isn't settled" on the question of whether human activity is causing...

mikeklonsky

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coopmike48 solidaridad: Schools Matter: A match made in privatization purgatory? Capricious Young and A.J. Duffy! -http://t.co/LHL9ysp3 minutes ago · reply · retweet · favorite

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Back To School: Investing In Distraction

ourfuture.org - Back to School: Investing In Distraction My guest today is Sabrina Stevens Shupe. Sabrina is a teacher, writer, and activist who has worked with students in struggling communities in Philadelphia a...

mikeklonsky

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Video

nypost.com - The number of homeless students in city public schools has quad-rupled since the economy tanked in 2008 -- weighing down an already overburdened system with an additional 30,000 kids lacking perman...

leoniehaimson

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Inside the Koch Brothers' 2011 Summer Seminar: Part 1

truthout.com - Those of you who follow The BRAD BLOG closely may know that I've been working in the background, for a number of weeks, on an exclusive series concerning the billionaire Koch Brothers, the co-owner...

mikeklonsky

Jobs Plan? End the Wars, Save 400,000 Jobs

truthout.com - President Obama is preparing to deliver a major address to a joint session of Congress on Thursday, outlining his plans for spending and tax cuts to create jobs.Here's a plan that would likely save...

mikeklonsky

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Longshoremen storm Wash. state port, damage RR

democraticunderground.com - Source: APLONGVIEW, Wash. (AP) — Hundreds of Longshoremen stormed the Port of Longview early Thursday, overpowered and held security guards, damaged railroad cars, and dumped grain that is the cent...

coopmike48

Whoa! Longshoremen mount wildcat strike in Seattle

teamsternation.blogspot.com - Longshoremen in Seattle and Tacoma struck the ports after their union brothers and sisters stormed the Port of Longview, blocked a train and dumped grain. KOMO News has the story: Hundreds of Long...

coopmike48

Longshoremen storm Wash. port over labor dispute

apnews.excite.com - LONGVIEW, Wash. (AP) - Hundreds of Longshoremen stormed the Port of Longview early Thursday, overpowered and held security guards, damaged railroad cars, and dumped grain that is the center of a la...

coopmike48

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This is what we union thugs look like

teamsternation.blogspot.com - Yup, Albert Einstein belonged to Local 552 of the American Federation of Teachers. We mention this because we've been hearing a lot of "union thug this" and "union thug that" lately. So we thought...

coopmike48

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Save Seattle Schools Community Blog: Public Testimony (and Opt Your Kid Out Now)

Save Seattle Schools Community Blog: Public Testimony (and Opt Your Kid Out Now):

Public Testimony (and Opt Your Kid Out Now)

by Melissa Westbrook
One point before the public testimony info. Last night I put forth arguments on three topics that seem to neatly line up with accountability (Sealth elevator), transparency (TFA donor) and public engagement (Series 4000). I hope the Board realizes that mouthing these words without backing it up with action means little.

Last night had some interesting testimony (along with some funny lines).

Highlights:
  • There were two speakers who talked about military recruiting in the schools. One was Garfield parent, Kathy Barker, who said that the district used to have a good policy that had been carefully crafted. Now, with the new overhaul of Board policies, she thinks it has been weakened. NCLB allows the military in (that was built into the law) and is in a different category than other recruiters. One troubling issue is that sometimes recruiters can come in extra times and if they do 15 minutes of tutoring, they can then talk about the military. She also mentioned a Garfield coach who was the recruiter at the school (this should not have been allowed). She also mentioned how College and Career counselors used to monitor this situation but now they are gone.
  • Another speaker on the military was veteran Mike Dedrick of Veterans for Peace. He made my radar go
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Full text of Obama's jobs speech - NorthJersey.com

Full text of Obama's jobs speech - NorthJersey.com:

Full text of Obama's jobs speech

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2011
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
ASSOCIATED PRESS

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, and fellow Americans:

President Barack Obama delivers a speech to a joint session of Congress at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, Sept. 8, 2011.
AP PHOTO
President Barack Obama delivers a speech to a joint session of Congress at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, Sept. 8, 2011.

Tonight we meet at an urgent time for our country. We continue to face an economic crisis that has left millions of our neighbors jobless, and a political crisis that has made things worse.

This past week, reporters have been asking "What will this speech mean for the President? What will it mean for Congress? How will it affect their polls, and the next election?"

But the millions of Americans who are watching right now: they don't care about politics. They have real life concerns. Many have spent months looking for work. Others are doing their best just to scrape by - giving up nights out with the family to save on gas or make the mortgage; postponing retirement to send a kid to college.

These men and women grew up with faith in an America where hard work and responsibility paid off. They believed in a country where everyone gets a fair shake and does their fair share - where if you stepped up, did your job, and were loyal to your company, that loyalty would be rewarded with a decent salary and good benefits; maybe a raise once in awhile. If you did the right thing, you could make it in America.

But for decades now, Americans have watched that compact erode. They have seen the deck too often

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Fact Sheet: The American Jobs Act | The White House

Fact Sheet: The American Jobs Act | The White House:

Fact Sheet: The American Jobs Act

by The White House
Release Time:
For Immediate Release

THE AMERICAN JOBS ACT

1. Tax Cuts to Help America’s Small Businesses Hire and Grow

  • Cutting the payroll tax in half for 98 percent of businesses: The President’s plan will cut in half the taxes paid by businesses on their first $5 million in payroll, targeting the benefit to the 98 percent of firms that have payroll below this threshold.
  • A complete payroll tax holiday for added workers or increased wages: The President’s plan will completely eliminate payroll taxes for firms that increase their payroll by adding new workers or increasing the wages of their current worker (the benefit is capped at the first $50 million in payroll increases).
  • Extending 100% expensing into 2012: This continues an effective incentive for new investment.
  • Reforms and regulatory reductions to help entrepreneurs and small businesses access capital.

2. Putting Workers Back on the Job While Rebuilding and Modernizing America

  • A “Returning Heroes” hiring tax credit for veterans: This provides tax credits from $5,600 to $9,600 to encourage the hiring of unemployed veterans.
  • Preventing up to 280,000 teacher layoffs,while keeping cops and firefighters on the job.
  • Modernizing at least 35,000 public schools across the country,supporting new science labs, Internet-ready classrooms and renovations at schools across the country, in rural and urban areas.
  • Immediate investments in infrastructure and a bipartisan National Infrastructure Bank,modernizing our roads, rail, airports and waterways while putting hundreds of thousands of workers back on the job.
  • A New “Project Rebuild”, which will put people to work rehabilitating homes, businesses and communities, leveraging private capital and scaling land banks and other public-private collaborations.
  • Expanding access to high-speed wirelessas part of a plan for freeing up the nation’s spectrum.

3. Pathways Back to Work for Americans Looking for Jobs.

  • The most innovative reform to the unemployment insurance program in 40 years: As part of an extension of unemployment insurance to prevent 5 million Americans looking for work from losing their benefits, the President’s plan includes innovative work-based reforms to prevent layoffs and give states greater flexibility to use UI funds to best support job-seekers, including:
    • Work-Sharing: UI for workers whose employers choose work-sharing over layoffs.
    • A new “Bridge to Work” program: The plan builds on and improves innovative state programs where those displacedtake temporary, voluntary work or pursue on-the-job training.
    • Innovative entrepreneurship and wage insurance programs: States will also be empowered to implement wage insurance to help reemploy older workers and programs that make it easier for unemployed workers to start their own businesses.
  • A $4,000 tax credit to employers for hiring long-term unemployed workers.
  • Prohibiting employers from discriminating against unemployed workerswhen hiring.
  • Expanding job opportunities for low-income youth and adults through a fund for successful approaches for subsidized employment, innovative training programs and summer/year-round jobs for youth.

4. Tax Relief for Every American Worker and Family

  • Cutting payroll taxes in half for 160 million workers next year: The President’s plan will expand the payroll tax cut passed last year to cut workers payroll taxes in half in 2012 – providing a $1,500 tax cut to the typical American family, without negatively impacting the Social Security Trust Fund.
  • Allowing more Americans to refinance their mortgages at today’s near 4 percent interest rates, which can put more than $2,000 a year in a family’s pocket.

5. Fully Paid for as Part of the President’s Long-Term Deficit Reduction Plan.To ensure that the American Jobs Act is fully paid for, the President will call on the Joint Committee to come up with additional deficit reduction necessary to pay for the Act and still meet its deficit target. The President will, in the coming days, release a detailed plan that will show how we can do that while achieving the additional deficit reduction necessary to meet the President’s broader goal of stabilizing our debt as a share of the economy.

download a PDF of this report
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Education Technology and Other People’s Children | LFA: Join The Conversation - Public School Insights

Education Technology and Other People’s Children | LFA: Join The Conversation - Public School Insights:

Education Technology and Other People’s Children

by obriena

Last weekend, Matt Richtel wrote a piece for the New York Timesthat has lit up the education blogosphere: “In Classroom of Future, Stagnant Scores.”

In it, Richtel questions the shifting of public tax dollars towards education technology when those technologies have not been proven to improve student standardized test scores. Some are outraged, claiming that money could be spent lowering class sizes or on other proven strategies for school improvement.

My immediate reaction was, “But current standardized tests are not a good measure of what we expect children to know in the 21st century.” And several bloggers have responded to this piece with similar sentiment.

My next thought was concern about how some education “advocates” and watchdog groups who track public spending will use this information to bolster their argument against funding education technology. And I found myself wondering what kind of schools their children attend.

That took my mind back to a piece I remember from School Finance 101 last July. In it, Bruce Baker explains his decision to send his children to private independent schools while being a staunch defender and supporter of the public system. While

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Partnerships Between Home and School: The Real Missing Link? « Whole Child Education

The Whole Child Podcast « Whole Child Education:

Partnerships Between Home and School: The Real Missing Link?

September 8th, 2011

Download Podcast Now [Right-Click to Save]

Families are a central source of children’s learning and development and their influence cannot be ignored. Engaging with families can inform, complement, reinforce, and accelerate educators’ efforts to educate the whole child. Without strategic and continuous connections between families and educators, we cannot ensure that students are healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged.

In this episode of the Whole Child Podcast, we examine research that overwhelmingly reinforces the need for family engagement, practices that create and sustain meaningful involvement, policies that can bring about systemic change, and barriers that we must overcome to achieve this vision. You’ll hear from
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School Construction Process - Letters (CA Dept of Education)

School Construction Process - Letters (CA Dept of Education):

September 8, 2011

Dear County and District Superintendents and Charter School Administrators:

WORKING IN COOPERATION ON THE SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION PROCESS TO
PROVIDE SAFE AND MODERN SCHOOL FACILITIES

Providing safe and modern school facilities for California’s children is of vital importance to our state. Achieving that goal requires decision-makers at every level of the school construction process to have accurate and reliable information.

As such, I have been troubled by the claims made recently by opponents of project labor agreements. Project labor agreements are a valuable tool to help local education agencies complete quality projects on time, reduce maintenance costs, assure worker safety, and maximize local job creation.

Specifically, the UCLA Labor Center–California Construction Academy has thoroughly analyzed a recent report critical of project labor agreements. Their analysis raises serious concerns about the study’s focus, methodology, and the way in which results are reported.

A copy of their analysis accompanies this letter. I hope you will review it and consider it as you determine the best approach for meeting the school facilities needs of your community.

Having declared the first school financial emergency in California’s history earlier this year, I am fully aware of the challenging fiscal circumstances school districts face.

I remain convinced, however, that our state’s economic recovery depends on our willingness to work in partnership with the working people of California, creating jobs and opportunity in the process.

If you have any questions regarding this subject, please contact Craig Cheslog, Principal Advisor to the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Superintendent’s Initiatives Office, by phone at 916-319-0554 or by e-mail atccheslog@cde.ca.gov.

Sincerely,

Tom Torlakson

TT:ccc
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Obama Calls for $60 Billion to Save Teacher Jobs, Fix Schools - Politics K-12 - Education Week

Obama Calls for $60 Billion to Save Teacher Jobs, Fix Schools - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

Obama Calls for $60 Billion to Save Teacher Jobs, Fix Schools

by Alyson Klein

President Barack Obama is calling for $30 billion in new money to stave off teacher layoffs, and $30 billion more to revamp facilities at the nation's K-12 schools and community colleges, as he outlines his vision for spurring the sputtering economy in a speech to Congress tonight.

K-12 schools could get up to $25 billion, which administration officials estimate could pay for makeovers of some 35,000 public schools. The money could be used for emergency repairs and renovations, energy efficiency updates, and asbestos removal. Schools also could use the money to build new science and computer labs, and to update technology. Rural schools would get special priority. Another $5 billion would go to help retool community college facilities. (For more on a possible legislative vehicle for the plan, click here.)

The money to avert teacher layoffs could save as many as 280,000 educators' jobs, senior administration officials estimated. To put the $30 billion in perspective, that's about twice as much as districts got from the

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NYC Public School Parents: Please fill out our brief survey on class size and budget cuts now!

NYC Public School Parents: Please fill out our brief survey on class size and budget cuts now!:

Please fill out our brief survey on class size and budget cuts now!

by Leonie Haimson

Welcome back to a new school year.
I hope your children had a good first day of school.
I have posted a VERY BRIEF survey for you to fill out about class sizes and or other effects of budget cuts at your schools.
Whether you are a parent, teacher, administrator or student, please fill out this survey and forward it to others; it will take only 5 minutes or less. Your name and participation will remain completely confidential unless you choose otherwise, but we need this info badly to see how much and where class sizes have increased this year.
Meanwhile, the mayor’s ratings have slipped sharply, with only 34% approving of his handling of our schools, and 52% disapproving, according to a new NYT poll . The Mayor discounted the poll, saying “In the end, polls don’t matter — it’s what mayors do.”
The top concern of parents in this new poll is class size and overcrowding, just as it is in the DOE’s own surveys. Yet Walcott in an interview discounted the importance of increasing class sizes, saying he expected an average rise of only 1.5 students per class, which he claimed would have little impact on our schools.
Yet this ignores the fact that our class sizes are already above optimal levels, have increased sharply for the last three years in a row, and the research shows that every single student added to a class diminishes learning for the whole.
Walcott also seems unaware or unconcerned with how in individual schools, class size is a discontinuous phenomenon, and likely to increase much more than 1.5 students each time a teaching position is eliminated. This year we believe about 5,000 teaching positions have been lost through attrition, retirement and excessing, while enrollment continues to grow. DOE also plans to lay off over 700 school aides this year; see video from our press conference yesterday.
Instead of helping our kids succeed, Walcott said his top priority this year would be improving public relations and getting his staff on TV.
Above are the UFT contractual caps in each grades, compared to the goals in the city’s C4E plan.
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