Sunday, April 22, 2012

porcupine backs into a cactus - Beware of AstroTurf Ed Reformers

porcupine backs into a cactus - 
Beware of AstroTurf Ed Reformers 

porcupine backs into a cactus



Just Like Michelle Rhee's Students first only BETTER


Astroturf lobbying refers to political organizations or campaigns that appear to be made up of grassroots activists but are actually organized and run by corporate interests seeking to further their own agendas. Such groups are often typified by innocent-sounding names that have been chosen specifically to disguise the group's true backers

Just Like Michelle Rhee's
 Students first Astroturf lobbying (only Better) 
we support:

  • Promoting voucher programs that drain public schools of resources by using taxpayer dollars to subsidize private school profits, and specifying that those schools must remain unregulated.
  • Offering private school vouchers with “universal eligibility” (using taxpayer dollars to subsidize private schools for the rich and others); “means-tested eligibility,” (using poverty as the first domino in an effort to privatize public schools ; and “universal eligibility with means-tested scholarship.” (Here, “scholarship” means using taxpayer dollars to pay private school tuition and/or profits.)
  • Creating a scheme to deem public schools “educationally bankrupt” to rationalize giving taxpayer dollars to almost completely unregulated private schools, rather than addressing any problems.
  • Setting up low-income students for failure in college by incentivizing early graduation for students in need of a complete high school education.
  • Certifying individuals with no education background as teachers, a move that would weaken the quality of education, that fails to recognize there is more to teaching than knowledge of a subject, and that would undermine the role and competitiveness of professional teachers.
  • Eliminating tenure for teachers in favor of “performance,” allowing districts to fire older teachers in favor of lower-cost young teachers.
  • Undermining teacher’s unions.
Other Astroturf lobbying groups love Stand ON Children First

Just Like Michelle Rhee's Students first only BETTER©
Proudly Sponsored by

I would’ve sworn you used the word “transparency” – The Art of Moving Public Funds “Off-Line” - Wait, What?

I would’ve sworn you used the word “transparency” – The Art of Moving Public Funds “Off-Line” - Wait, What?:


I would’ve sworn you used the word “transparency” – The Art of Moving Public Funds “Off-Line”

MOM CONGRESS - Parenting.com

Educational Resources - Parental Involvement - Parenting.com:


They don't really take summers off, and other info they'd like you to know

Frog Birds, Autonomous Individuals, Groups and Flying Kites in the Rain « Cooperative Catalyst

Frog Birds, Autonomous Individuals, Groups and Flying Kites in the Rain « Cooperative Catalyst:


Frog Birds, Autonomous Individuals, Groups and Flying Kites in the Rain

I believe that society must be reconstructed to enlarge the contribution of autonomous individuals and primary groups to the total effectiveness of a new system of production designed to satisfy the human needs which it also determines.
-Illich (1973)

Frog Birds, Autonomous Individuals and Groups

The time is now to listen to Frog Birds, intensify your autonomous local groups and fly kites regardless of the occasional fluky wind and rainstorm.

Image Attribute: http://etc.usf.edu/clip/
Every evening in spring I hear the Wood Cock croaking in our fields like a frog bird. Usually on the edge in a wild-scape it beckons “greeck, greeck, greeck”. Then, as it flies into the dusk draped fields surrounded by woods I hear its song change to an ethereal call of light tones, sweet, light and comforting; as a mountain vista is in the west after making that last push over the ridge. I know the sound of the Wood Cock like that of the eagles laugh and humming bird’s wing song….it is familiar. Likewise I know the sound of my community, our transition movements, the organizations that shelter change makers and ready for the next bend in the river to support them. I know also the schools which dot my region waiting like a confused flock abandoned by their masters and 

How zoning policies affect student achievement - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

How zoning policies affect student achievement - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post:


How zoning policies affect student achievement

This was written by Richard D. Kahlenberg, senior fellow at The Century Foundation. It first appeared on the foundation’s website.

By Richard D. Kahlenberg
Americans value equal educational opportunity, but our system has always undercut that goal with housing, zoning, and school assignment policies that consign low-income students to high-poverty schools where they tend to perform worse.  A fascinating new study by Jonathan Rothwell of the Brookings Institution outlines how zoning policies that limit opportunities for inexpensive housing in more affluent neighborhoods, and school policies that mandatorily assign students to schools largely based on what sort of neighborhoods their parents can afford to live in, conspire to reduce educational opportunity for low-income students.
Read full article >>


Does Congress know reading is fundamental?

This was written by Carol H. Rasco, president and chief executive officer for the non-profit Reading Is Fundamental, the nation’s largest nonprofit children’s literacy organization.


By Carol H. Rasco
Currently there are 16 million children in our nation living in poverty, the highest number in two decades, and in low-income neighborhoods, there is only one book for every 300 children. The most recently reported National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show that students in the United States continue to struggle with the most fundamental educational skill — reading.
Read full article >>

School Tech Connect: Pineapples

School Tech Connect: Pineapples:


Pineapples

I know there's been a lot of attention to the pineapple question on the New York test, but I'd like to point out that these terrible test questions are as common as the rain. You only hear about them when someone takes the risk of pointing them out. It is a testing violation for teachers to look through the testing booklet to see what's on the test.

I did this very thing several times at my own risk over the years, just to see if the tests had any remote relationship to the things we were doing in class.  I would never do it now, in the current police state around testing.

I recall two writing prompts in Arizona that measured god only knows what. I'm only slightly paraphrasing here:

Your spaceship has landed on an unknown, alien planet. Describe what you see as you leave the capsule and