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Thursday, March 1, 2012

Anti charter school resolution passed by The Nova Project PTSA | Seattle Education

Anti charter school resolution passed by The Nova Project PTSA | Seattle Education:

Anti charter school resolution passed by The Nova Project PTSA

by seattleducation2011

Resolution from The Nova Project PTSA

(also referred to as Nova High School)

The Nova Project is an alternative public high school in Seattle that is committed to equitable education for all students. Our community believes that fully funded public education is fundamental to the survival of our democracy and collective well-being. We call upon all citizens to demand adequate funding for public education and to reject efforts to privatize public schools.

The Nova Community:

* Supports the state Supreme Court ruling that Washington must comply with its constitutionally mandated,

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March 1st Day of Action for Education Transformation Blogger March #occupyeduM1 « Cooperative Catalyst

March 1st Day of Action for Education Transformation Blogger March #occupyeduM1 « Cooperative Catalyst:

March 1st Day of Action for Education Transformation Blogger March #occupyeduM1

by coopcatalyst

Today all over the country students, educators, parents and community members are taking part in Day of Action for Education Transformation. There are many ways to support this day of action. One way is to make your voice heard online. Today we will be collecting blog posts and twitter/facebook status message and pictures and posters in support of this day of action for education. Please joins us in a Blogger March, our collective vision and collective voice for real education transformation is important and powerful!

Here are a few ways you can take part:

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Daily Kos: About Andrew Breitbart

Daily Kos: About Andrew Breitbart:

About Andrew Breitbart

by rss@dailykos.com (teacherken)

"a special pile of human excrement,"

“villain,” a “duplicitous bastard,” and a “prick.”

he was a f@#$er. a big ass motherf@#$er. this aint a 24-hour zone, baby. he was a bad, bad dude. & if mary jo were your kin youd be dancin'.
I could go on.

The words are all Breitbart's.

They are those he chose to use on the occasion of the passing of Ted Kennedy in August 2009.

He thought they were appropriate to use towards that distinguished public servant.

Let them be more appropriately applied to him.

I am normally inclined to be generous, particularly at the time of someone's passing.

Breitbart however had no shame, no regrets, for what he had said and written.

a special pile of human excrement seems appropriate phrasing, from his lips, to apply to himself.

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Williamsburg Parents File Suit Against Success Charter Network « New York City Parents Union

Williamsburg Parents File Suit Against Success Charter Network « New York City Parents Union:

Williamsburg Parents File Suit Against Success Charter Network

by admin

Williamsburg parents and community fight back seeking an injunction to stop PEP’s rubber stamp co-location vote.

Williamsburg Parents Lawsuit Against Success Charter Network Seeking An Injunction To Prevent Co-location


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Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Democracy Now!

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Democracy Now!:

Democracy Now!

by Mike Klonsky
Occupy Education: Teachers, Students Fight School Closings, Privatization, Layoffs, Rankings

Popout
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A Parent Says: Enough of the Blame Game With Teachers – SchoolBook

A Parent Says: Enough of the Blame Game With Teachers – SchoolBook:

A Parent Says: Enough of the Blame Game With Teachers

0 Commentsr Research

March 1, 2012, 11:56 a.m.

By MARTHA FOOTE

“TDRs are a four-letter word!” That was my son’s favorite slogan when the parents and teachers at his school, Public School 321 in Park Slope, held a rally in the fall of 2010 to protest the imminent release of the teacher data reports. We were not alone. Sister rallies were held the same day at Brooklyn’s Public School 24, Public School 29, Middle School 51, Public School 154, and the John Jay Campus Community, and more than 5,000 letters of protest were signed across all five boroughs condemning the public humiliation of teachers as well as the release of what we believed were inaccurate scores. Sadly, though, after months of legal appeals, the teacher data reports were finally made

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NEA Van Roekel:Teacher Rankings Don't Tell the Whole Story

Education Nation 2011: Van Roekel:Teacher Rankings Don't Tell the Whole Story:

Van Roekel:Teacher Rankings Don't Tell the Whole Story
Dennis Van Roekel //Feb. 29, 2012 // 12:21 PM

Media outlets in New York have recently published data about teachers based on their students’ test scores, after a court forced the school system to release the information. I’m all for public access to information and the smart use of data, but I also know that numbers can be misinterpreted and misread. In this case, there’s a risk not only to teachers but also to students if we draw the wrong conclusions from these test results.

The emphasis on standardized testing, which has increased in the decade since No Child Left Behind was enacted, has already distorted public education. Parents have realized that the time spent preparing students for these tests, subjecting them to rote drills on a narrow curriculum, would be better used engaging students in a broader

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Wisconsin education reform echoes ALEC’s agenda | Defend Wisconsin

Wisconsin education reform echoes ALEC’s agenda | Defend Wisconsin:

Wisconsin education reform echoes ALEC’s agenda

by Itay

Republican state legislators are starting to move on a number of proposals to “reform” Wisconsin’s public schools. The bills bear the marks of having been poured through the filter of the American Legislative Exchange Council‘s agenda for school reform before they were exposed to the light of day.

This week the Assembly Committee on Education held a hearing on a voucher bill for special needs children that appears to be modeled on the ALEC Special Needs Scholarship Program Act. The bill would allow students with disabilities to attend a private or a public school outside their district with the help of a taxpayer-funded subsidy worth more than $13,000 per student.

Assembly Bill 110 would create a Special Needs Scholarship Program that would allow special education students to transfer to private or public charter schools. The school accepting the student would receive the aid for the student and the student’s former school would lose it.

Disability rights advocates and staff from the Department of Public Instruction say the proposal

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A Civil Right to Unionize - NYTimes.com

A Civil Right to Unionize - NYTimes.com:

A Civil Right to Unionize

By RICHARD D. KAHLENBERG and MOSHE Z. MARVIT
Published: February 29, 2012

FROM the 1940s to the 1970s, organized labor helped build a middle-class democracy in the United States. The postwar period was as successful as it was because of unions, which helped enact progressive social legislation from the Civil Rights Act to Medicare. Since then, union representation of American workers has fallen, in tandem with the percentage of income going to the middle class. Broadly shared prosperity has been replaced by winner-take-all plutocracy.

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Maxwell Holyoke-Hirsch

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Corporations will tell you that the American labor movement has declined so significantly — to around 7 percent of the private-sector work force today, from 35 percent of the private sector in the mid-1950s — because unions are

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Parents, homeowners call on Pritzker Family to pay their fair share of taxes | Hyatt Hurts

Parents, homeowners call on Pritzker Family to pay their fair share of taxes | Hyatt Hurts:

Parents, homeowners call on Pritzker Family to pay their fair share of taxes

Mar 1st, 2012

As property tax bills come due for thousands of Chicago homeowners, Hyatt hotel workers and community leaders are calling on the family that owns and runs Hyatt to drop pending tax appeals on their homes and pay their fair share.

The Pritzker family, which owns the majority of Hyatt Hotels’ stock, is the richest family in Chicago. Since 2003 Pritzker family members and Hyatt CEO Mark Hoplamazian have appealed their assessments at least 70 times, and have lowered tax payments by over $300,000. Penny Pritzker serves on the Chicago Board of Education. There are two tax appeals pending for her 7 bathroom, 8,400 square foot house. These tax breaks could come at the expense of Chicago Public Schools.

Read the full report.

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About those Dice… Ready, Set, Roll! On the VAM-ification of Tenure « School Finance 101

About those Dice… Ready, Set, Roll! On the VAM-ification of Tenure « School Finance 101:

About those Dice… Ready, Set, Roll! On the VAM-ification of Tenure

by schoolfinance101

A while back I wrote a post (and here) in which I explained that the relatively high error rates in Value-added modeling might make it quite difficult for teachers to get tenure under some newly adopted and other proposed guidelines and much easier to lose it, even after waiting years to get lucky [& yes I do mean LUCKY] enough to obtain it.

The standard reformy template is that teachers should only be able to get tenure after 3 years of good ratings in a row and that teachers should be subject to losing tenure if they get 2 bad years in a row. Further, it is possible that the evaluations might actually stipulate that you can only get a good rating if you achieve a certain rating on the quantitative portion of the evaluation – or the VAM score. Likewise for bad ratings (that is, the quantitative measure overrides all else in the system).

The premise of the dice rolling activity from my previous post was that it is necessarily much less likely to roll

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Shanker Blog » Apprenticeships: A Rigorous And Tested Training Model For Workers And Management

Shanker Blog » Apprenticeships: A Rigorous And Tested Training Model For Workers And Management:

Apprenticeships: A Rigorous And Tested Training Model For Workers And Management

by Robert I. Lerman

Our guest author today is Robert I. Lerman, Institute Fellow at the Urban Institute and Professor of Economics at American University. Professor Lerman conducts research and policy analyses on employment, income support and youth development, especially as they affect low-income populations. He served on the National Academy of Sciences panel examining the U.S. post-secondary education and training system for the workplace.

In a recent Washington Post article, Peter Whoriskey points out the striking paradox of serious worker shortages at a time of high unemployment. His analysis is one of many indicating the difficulties faced by manufacturing firms in hiring enough workers with adequate occupational skills. As a result, many firms are having serious problems meeting the demand for their products, putting on long shifts, and turning down orders.

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Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: From the civil rights battle front

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: From the civil rights battle front:

From the civil rights battle front

by Mike Klonsky
Little Rock, 1957
'More Blacks and Latinos Admitted to Elite New York High Schools'

When I read the above headline in the Times this morning, I thought for a moment I was in Arkansas circa 1957, when National Guard troops were needed to escort the Little Rock 9 through the doors of Central High School. Maybe we should call these newly-admitted black and Lationo students, the Stuyvesant 9.


The Right to organize

Richard Kahlenberg and Moshe Marvit have an Op-Ed in today's NYT: "A Civil Right to Unionize." They call for legislation that would make disciplining
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