Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Statement by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan U.S. Department of Education

U.S. Department of Education:

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Crazy-Think and Education Policy - Teacher in a Strange Land - Education Week Teacher

Crazy-Think and Education Policy - Teacher in a Strange Land - Education Week Teacher:

Crazy-Think and Education Policy

by Nancy Flanagan
During the late 1940's, most people either looked the other way or cheered the process on when "accused Communists"-- their neighbors, their co-workers, their union leaders, sometimes their teachers-- were attacked in the press, hauled before congressional or state committee, and run out of their jobs.
Now people are doing exactly the same thing when public school teachers are being attacked by politicians and the press. They either avoid thinking about what is going on or tell themselves it must be the teachers' fault. The same thing happened when the Jim Crow codes were imposed in the South, and the Japanese were sent to internment camps. It's one thing to study this kind of inhumanity and indifference; it is another to see it unfold before your very eyes.


In the past week, I've seen two blogs (here and here) comparing what's happening at this moment in the fight

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Administration for Children and Families invites you to tour its new website

Home | Administration for Children and Families:

The Administration for Children and Families invites you to tour its new website: http://transition.acf.hhs.gov/. ACF has worked hard to make the website more user-friendly for the public and for writers like you who are interested in learning about the social services safety net your nation provides.

From using more plain language and less government/legal speak to featuring personal stories and a better outline of services, the new look will help the site’s audience navigate easily — including people with disabilities thanks to technology that allows content to be accessible.

Individual programs at ACF are well known to Americans, even though the agency name — the Administration for Children and Families — is not. Here are some programs you’ve probably heard of:

• Temporary Assistance for Needy Families

• Child Care

• Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program

• Child Support

• Head Start

• Refugee Resettlement

• Foster Care/Adoption

Today, you see the first phase of development; the site will be a work in progress throughout 2012. While staff updates content daily, you’ll find much of the detailed information you need still lives on the old site (www.acf.hhs.gov). By the fall of 2012, the new website will be complete and all of the content will be on the new platform.

ACF hopes that the new website spurs your interest in its 65 programs and provides a more balanced look at Americans who live under the poverty level.

For more information, please contact Kenneth Wolfe, deputy director of the Office of Public Affairs, by phone at (202) 401-9215 or via email at kenneth.wolfe@acf.hhs.gov.

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The Academic Service-Learning Answer to Student Engagement « The Whole Child Blog « Whole Child Education

The Academic Service-Learning Answer to Student Engagement « The Whole Child Blog « Whole Child Education:

The Academic Service-Learning Answer to Student Engagement

by ASCD Whole Child Bloggers

Teri Dary

Post submitted by Teri Dary, co-chair of whole child partner the National Coalition for Academic Service-Learning (NCASL) and service-learning consultant at the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. At NCASL, she leads collaborative efforts to advance academic service-learning in the school setting among state-level service-learning experts. Connect with Dary through the NCASL website and follow her on Twitter @NCASL_TeriDary.

Service-learning engages students in powerful ways, helping them to increase their academic engagement and performance, civic engagement and social-emotional learning. Students connect to the community and to their classmates in ways that are far more powerful than simple cooperative learning. And by applying their knowledge and skills to solve actual community problems, students experience the real-world value of what they are learning in school.

Service-learning is a method:

  • Through which students learn and develop through applying knowledge and skills they learn in the
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The Facts About Charter Schools - www.togetherwesoar.org

www.togetherwesoar.org

The Facts About Charter Schools

Charter schools are out-of-state, for-profit corporations that make personal profits from education tax dollars. The introduction of charter schools to Alabama will take nearly $200 million a year from our neighborhood public schools. Yet, major studies prove that charter schools fail to provide a better alternative to existing neighborhood public schools. Our kids can’t afford to lose another $200 million every year to fund an educational experiment that doesn’t even work.

Charter Schools Don’t Work

Stanford University, U.S. Department of Education, RAND Corporation Logos with books

Studies by Stanford University, the U.S. Dept. of Education, and the RAND Corporation prove that charter schools fail to provide a better alternative to our neighborhood public schools.

The Stanford University study concludes that charter schools fail at their mission twice as often as they succeed.

That’s not a passing grade!

We Can’t Afford Charter Schools
  • Charter schools will take nearly $200 million a year from our neighborhood public schools.
  • Neighborhood public school funding has been cut for four straight years with no end in sight.How can our kids afford nearly $200 million more?
  • The current plan wil send those tax dollars to out-of-state, for-profit corporations.
  • Charter school corporations make hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue from local tax dollars. Charter CEOs make personal fortunes in salary every year.
Charter Schools Lack
Transparency and Encourage Corruption

Corruption is rife in the charter school industry:

  • Fully one quarter of Philadelphia charter schools are under investigation for fraud, financial mismanagement, and conflicts of interest.
  • A California charter school chain closed 60 charter schools after an audit revealed theft and misappropriation of public funds by its founder.
  • A Minnesota charter school closed after its owner was sentenced to federal prison for using school funds for personal vacations and expenses.
  • Turkish-run charter schools are under investigation in Ohio and Illinois for abusing an immigration loophole to bring teachers suspected of being part of a right-wing group into the country.
  • Charter schools lack standards. They ignore teacher certification and curriculum, are not subject to board oversight, and are not publicly accountable – all standards designed to keep our kids safe and make sure they are learning. Charter schools create an environment where fraud and corruption are encouraged.
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Documentary Lamblasts Mexico’s Failing School System (VIDEO) - Hispanically Speaking News

Documentary Lamblasts Mexico’s Failing School System (VIDEO) - Hispanically Speaking News:

Documentary Lambasts Mexico’s Failing School System (VIDEO)

Documentary Lambasts Mexico’s Failing School System (VIDEO)

Mexican filmmaker, Juan Carlos Rulfo, and journalist, Carlos Loret de Mola, have joined forces to show México, as well as the world, the current state of their school system. ‘¡De Panzazo!’ the Spanish equivalent to the English saying, ‘barely passing,’ offers a glimpse into the failing Mexican education system. It’s a system in which 8 out of 10 students in secondary school enter without the ability to multiply and only 60% of students will graduate.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the movie earned an impressive $870,000 on its opening weekend in Mexico City beating out Oscar winner ‘The Artist.

Ranked among the 30 OECD, or Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, countries at a dismal #30, Mexican students spend on average only 4.5 hours per day in the classroom. The documentary, very critical of the teachers unions, especially its leader since 1989, Elba Esther Gordillo, discusses the lack of

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Arizona's Education Debates Reflect Republican Candidates' Conservative Rhetoric

Arizona's Education Debates Reflect Republican Candidates' Conservative Rhetoric:

Arizona's Education Debates Reflect Republican Candidates' Conservative Rhetoric

by Joy Resmovits
In the last few months, Arizona's conservative state legislature has sparred over bills that would police teachers for profanity inside and outside the classroom and allow for the study of the Bible in public and charter schools. These debates follow the 2010 ban on teaching ethnic studies.

According to critics, though, these arguments -- which primarily focus on social issues that can come up in the classroom -- ignore Arizona's deeper, festering difficulties in educating its children.

"This is the third or fourth legislature where instead of talking about the real issues -- not enough resources for education or accountability for everybody involved -- they do things like saying kids don’t know enough about
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Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Release to press of teacher data has become a rallying cry

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Release to press of teacher data has become a rallying cry:

Release to press of teacher data has become a rallying cry

by Mike Klonsky
Public debasing of teachers in N.Y.
N.Y. Mayor Bloomberg and Gov. Cuomo may have won the legal battle to base teacher evaluations on student test scores and publish them in the press. But they may have also unwittingly awakened a sleeping giant of a resistance movement. Shades of what happened in Wisconsin in response to Gov. Walker's union busting legislation.

The Times reports that this latest assault on teachers has lit a spark.
In the days leading up to the release of ratings for thousands of New York City public-school
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You’ve Been VAM-IFIED! Thoughts (& Graphs) on the NYC Teacher Data « School Finance 101

You’ve Been VAM-IFIED! Thoughts (& Graphs) on the NYC Teacher Data « School Finance 101:

You’ve Been VAM-IFIED! Thoughts (& Graphs) on the NYC Teacher Data

by schoolfinance101

Readers of my blog know I’m both a data geek and a skeptic of the usefulness of Value-added data specifically as a human resource management tool for schools and districts. There’s been much talk this week about the release of the New York City teacher ratings to the media, and subsequent publication of those data by various news outlets. Most of the talk about the ratings has focused on the error rates in the ratings, and reporters from each news outlet have spent a great deal of time hiding behind their supposed ultra-responsibleness of being sure to inform the public that these ratings are not absolute, that they have significant error ranges, etc. Matt Di Carlo over at Shanker Blog has already provided a very solid explanatory piece on the error ranges and how those ranges affect classification of teachers as either good or bad.

But, the imprecision – as represented by error ranges – of each teacher’s effectiveness estimate is but one small

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Self-Organized Learning in the Standardized Classroom: Possible?! « Cooperative Catalyst

Self-Organized Learning in the Standardized Classroom: Possible?! « Cooperative Catalyst:

Self-Organized Learning in the Standardized Classroom: Possible?!

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Work within the system for slow systemic change, or from without for idealistic radical change? This is one of the most exhausting choices facing modern alternative educators. I want to take a crack at how we might approach educational transformation from within a typical public charter school with all its focus on core curriculum and the drive towards college prep.

First, a quick “why.” College should be within the grasp of any graduating student, though I think it’s pretty clear that success and happiness in one’s life does not depend on it. Regardless, education remains one of the best socioeconomic equalizers at our disposal. Most urban dwellers – especially those of the not-rich variety – tend to have limited access to quality education. For example, here in New Orleans, your child is almost certainly either in a public charter school or a private parochial school (or not in school at all).

So, how do do we satisfy DoE-defined Grade-Level Expectations, appease the managerial preconceptions of a typical administration, and still create space for students to determine the direction of their own education?

First tool: Project Based Learning. This is a popular concept by now and most principles will gladly recognize it. With PBL, students are

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The charter school scam

The charter school scam:

Charter to nowhere
One of the durable legacies of the Bush administration, aside from two miserable wars and the wreckage of a world-historical credit bubble, is the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law, passed within months of George W's taking office. NCLB mandated the restructuring of American public education along the lines of what partisans like to call choice and accountability. That is, parents are supposed to be offered alternatives to traditional public schools (TPS)—and students and their teachers and schools are supposed to be subject to constant testing to evaluate their academic performance. Under NCLB, federal school aid to states was made contingent on improvement in average test scores.
There are many reasons to criticize the law, starting with the testing fetish. Since so much money now hangs on success, states have rampantly cheated in creating their tests; in many states, students have shown remarkable progress that isn't confirmed by the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress. And it's not clear how well a focus on test performance correlates with actual educational outcomes. International comparisons show that despite being the most test-obsessed educational system in the world, U.S. students stack up rather poorly. The starkest contrast is with Finland, which routinely scores at the top of the global league tables, but whose students face only two or three tests during their entire school careers. And, curiously, in Finland, teaching is a revered and well-paid profession; in the U.S., the chartering and testing crowd—let's call them “reformers”—treats them as overpaid slackers badly in need of a heavy diet of carrots and sticks.
Landscape
Instead of rejecting this debased Bush legacy, the Obama administration has intensified its commitment. Using money from the stimulus package, the administration has set up a Race to the Top (RTTT), in which states

CHARTER SCHOOL SCANDALS WEBSITE

CHARTER SCHOOL SCANDALS
A compilation of news articles about charter schools which have been charged with, or are highly suspected of, tampering with admissions, grades, attendance and testing; misuse of funds and embezzlement; engaging in nepotism and conflicts of interest; engaging in complicated and shady real estate deals; and/or have been engaging in other questionable, unethical, borderline-legal, or illegal activities. This is also a record of charter school instability and other unsavory tidbits.
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CHARTER SCHOOL SCANDALS

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