Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Big Education Ape: 3-28-12 PM Big money behind pro-voucher attack on State Rep. Roebuck? EDition

Big Education Ape: PARENTS CAN!:
Big Education Ape: PARENTS CAN!

Published by Coopmike48 – 8 news spotters today

Not Common. Not Core, Either. - Teacher in a Strange Land

blogs.edweek.org - My friend Claudia Swisher, an exceptional veteran teacher from Oklahoma, recently posted an update in Goodreads, a kind of virtual book club where we hang out together. We have challenged each othe...
mikeklonsky

UK Study: Parents, Not Teachers, Key to Education

educationnews.org - A study by the Royal Economic Society, to be presented this week, finds that parental effect on test results is five times that of teachers’ influence. This comes in the wake of warnings by Sir Mic...
DianeRavitch

Different Results, Same Flawed Methods

shankerblog.org - Without question, designing school and district rating systems is a difficult task, and Ohio was somewhat ahead of the curve in attempting to do so (and they’re also great about releasing a ton of ...
DianeRavitch

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coopmike48 Financial records reveal school board spent public money on home furnishings: Financial records reveal scho... bit.ly/HhhRcZ #edu25 minutes ago · reply · retweet · favorite
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coopmike48 Assistant Secretary Dann-Messier to Visit Hopewell High's Academy of Engineering | U.S. Department of Education 1.usa.gov/HfmPJs4 minutes ago · reply · retweet · favorite

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OUR CHILDREN FOR SALE « Jean Jacques Crawb's Blog

jeanjacquescrawb.wordpress.com - About 15 years ago, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania created the concept of charter schools. These schools were to be free of the entanglement of most state regulations. They also were to be bastio...
DianeRavitch

CT News Junkie | OP-ED

ctnewsjunkie.com - by Sarah Darer Littman | Mar 23, 2012 11:21am(25) Comments | Log in to Post a Comment Posted to: Opinion (Updated 4:39 p.m. Sunday) Wednesday’s Where We Live with John Dankosky featured three membe...
DianeRavitch

SocietySee all

A Civil Right to Unionize

nytimes.com - 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 progres...
DianeRavitch

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Adrienne Rich. RIP. « Fred Klonsky

preaprez.wordpress.com - BY ADRIENNE RICHThere’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted who ...
fklonsky

Adrienne Rich. RIP. « Fred Klonsky

bigeducationape.blogspot.com - Adrienne Rich. RIP. « Fred Klonsky: "Lying is done with words and also with silence." - Adrienne RichWhat Kind of Times Are TheseBY ADRIENNE RICHThere’s a place between two stands of trees where th...
coopmike48

LAUSD TEACHER WITCH HUNT GOES INTO HIGH GEAR - Perdaily.com

bigeducationape.blogspot.com - LAUSD TEACHER WITCH HUNT GOES INTO HIGH GEAR - Perdaily.com: LAUSD TEACHER WITCH HUNT GOES INTO HIGH GEARby Leonard Isenberg(Mensaje se repite en Espaรฑol) (For a national view of public education r...
coopmike48

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Group Allied With Cuomo Tops Albany Spending List

nytimes.com - ALBANY — Highlighting a shift in the way money is spent to influence government, the group that spent the most on lobbying in New York last year was a coalition of business leaders allied with Gov....
leoniehaimson

CrimeSee all

Adopted Board Resolutions

tasanet.org - The following is a list of school districts that have adopted the Resolution Concerning High Stakes, Standardized Testing of Texas Public School Students. As of March 27, 2012, 192 districts have n...
DianeRavitch

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Princeton Review to Sell Test-Prep Unit

online.wsj.com - BY MELODIE WARNER Princeton Review Inc. agreed to sell its test-preparation business and the "Princeton Review" brand to private-equity firm Charlesbank Capital Partners for $33 million in cash as ...
leoniehaimson

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The American Spring’s New Tactics

theassailedteacher.com - The warm weather is rapidly approaching, which means the possibility of a resurgence of protests across the country. The Occupy movement has been scattered thanks to the evictions by the corporatis...
leoniehaimson

Reports from the Front Lines  | Occupy Together

occupytogether.org - This week in Occupy, the arrival of Spring brought everyone back into the streets, thousands rallied for Trayvon Martin, Union Square was #occupied and Occupy UC Davis permanently closed a bank bra...
coopmike48

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CT News Junkie | OP-ED

ctnewsjunkie.com - by Sarah Darer Littman | Mar 23, 2012 11:21am(25) Comments | Log in to Post a Comment Posted to: Opinion (Updated 4:39 p.m. Sunday) Wednesday’s Where We Live with John Dankosky featured three membe...
DianeRavitch

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Modern School: 30 Detroit Labor Unions Sell Souls for Illusion of Security

Modern School: 30 Detroit Labor Unions Sell Souls for Illusion of Security:


30 Detroit Labor Unions Sell Souls for Illusion of Security

by Michael Dunn

A coalition of 30 labor unions representing Detroit workers ratified new sell-out contracts this week in hopes of averting the imposition of an emergency financial manager by Gov. Rick Snyder. Under Michigan’s Emergency Manager law (see here, here and here), the governor can dissolve union contracts, abolish collective bargaining and fire elected officials when a city or municipality is deemed a financial failure.

The unions agreed to accept 10% pay cuts, layoffs and changes to city pensions, according toMSNBC. As has become the norm for unions lately, Detroit’s city unions have completely forgotten their reason for being: to improve the working and living conditions of their members. Union officials said they were willing to help save their city from financial meltdown, but apparently forgot that their members were not the cause of the city’s financial woes, which are the result of lost revenue due to the financial crisis, mismanagement, a declining population 
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Financial records reveal school board spent public money on home furnishings

Financial records reveal school board spent public money on home furnishings:

Financial records reveal school board spent public money on home furnishings



Posted: 03/23/2012
Last Updated: 5 hours and 16 minutes ago
PHOENIX - A Valley charter high school used public funds to pay for and fully furnish a residential home in a neighborhood less than a half a mile from the school.
According to financial documents supplied to the ABC15 Investigators by the Vicki A Romero High School , a Phoenix charter school, the school paid more than $48,681 for upgrades, repairs, and amenities before a salaried school employee moved into the home for several months.
Maricopa County Assessor’s records show the purchase of the house cost the school $40,000.
State Department of Education documents show the school, which enrolls between three and four hundred high school students each year, received more than two and a




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D.C. school budget: Parents, students decry cuts to high schools, librarians, special ed coordinators - D.C. Schools Insider - The Washington Post

D.C. school budget: Parents, students decry cuts to high schools, librarians, special ed coordinators - D.C. Schools Insider - The Washington Post: "Ways "


D.C. school budget: Parents, students decry cuts to high schools, librarians, special ed coordinators

By 
The witness list ran nine pages for Wednesday’s D.C. Council hearing on Mayor Vincent C. Gray’s proposed FY 2013 education budget, testament to the volume of unmet needs--and programs at risk of cuts--in the city’s schools.
Gray’s proposed spending plan provides a 2 percent raise in the student funding formula, which amounts to about $86 million. But basic costs, including teachers salaries, have risen closer to 5 percent. The numbers triggered a long line of speakers describing the prospect of fewer teachers and diminished programs in their schools.
“I’m very concerned,” said D.C. Council Chairman Kwame R. Brown. “I just don’t understand just how we have better test scores, more students. more money going to the schools and less money going to the classrooms. I believe more money should go to the classrooms.”
The hearing was going strong into its seventh hour at 6 p.m. Officials 
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Adrienne Rich. RIP. « Fred Klonsky

Adrienne Rich. RIP. « Fred Klonsky:

Adrienne_rich_seated
"Lying is done with words and also with silence." - Adrienne Rich

What Kind of Times Are These

There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.
I’ve walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don’t be fooled
this isn’t a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.
I won’t tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light—
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.
And I won’t tell you where it is, so why do I tell you
anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it’s necessary
to talk about trees.
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LAUSD TEACHER WITCH HUNT GOES INTO HIGH GEAR - Perdaily.com

LAUSD TEACHER WITCH HUNT GOES INTO HIGH GEAR - Perdaily.com:


LAUSD TEACHER WITCH HUNT GOES INTO HIGH GEAR

by Leonard Isenberg
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.jpg
(Mensaje se repite en Espaรฑol)

(For a national view of public education reform see the end of this blog post)
The hardest thing to understand for LAUSD teachers targeted for dismissal is that there doesn't have to be any rational justification why their principal is moving to get rid of them. During the last couple of weeks my phone has been ringing off the hook with teachers telling me the most surrealistic tales of how they have been accused of the most outlandish administratively fabricated actions against them that are being used to build a case for their dismissal.

Could this be the McMartin Preschoolesque legacy of the LAUSD Miramonte child abuse scandal, now being used proactively by the District to get rid of as many costly teachers as possible on the way to breaking the union and privatizing public education in Los Angeles and elsewhere throughout this country?

You've heard the expression damned if you do, damned if you don't? This came to mind as different teachers recounted to me how they have been given notices of unsatisfactory acts and subsequent suspensions in the 
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