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Sunday, June 17, 2012

Big Education Ape - Morning Wink 6-17 AM Posts #soschat #edreform



BIG EDUCATION APE - MORNING WINK  AM POSTS

Wait, What? - Working to educate, persuade and mobilize through "perceptive and acerbic" observations about Connecticut Government and Politics

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 7 minutes ago
Wait, What? - Working to educate, persuade and mobilize through "perceptive and acerbic" observations about Connecticut Government and Politics: Bridgeport: $3.4 Million in return for your democratic rights: Illegal, Racist or Both by jonpelto The State of Connecticut’s Education Funding Formula (ECS) is underfunded by at least $800 million. This means that many towns must raise their local property taxes higher than they should or that schools go without the funds they need to maintain adequate services. Last week Governor Malloy proposed and the Democrats in the Legislature ado... more »

School Tech Connect: Two Events in Chicago

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 10 minutes ago
School Tech Connect: Two Events in Chicago: Two Events in Chicago by noreply@blogger.com (Tim Furman) CTU is having a public meeting about contract negotiations* on June 25th* at Gage Park High School, 6:30 PM. (I posted the wrong date earlier.) 5630 S. Rockwell. I'll be there. I have some questions. Popout View Larger Map Also, there's this on the 26th. *Stand with Chicago Teachers* * CTU Solidarity Committee Organizing Meeting Tuesday, June 26 6:30 p.m. Grace Place, 637 South Dearborn The Labor Working Group, which brought together the Chicago Occupy movement and unions thr...more »

GOOD Ideas for Cities: Increasing Involvement in Middle School - Cities - GOOD

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 11 minutes ago
GOOD Ideas for Cities: Increasing Involvement in Middle School - Cities - GOOD: GOOD Ideas for Cities: Increasing Involvement in Middle School by Alissa Walker Popout Parents know they should be involved in their kids' education during elementary school, but as kids get older, parents become less engaged. The dropoff is greatest for the overlooked middle schools—even their names denote this neither-here-nor-there mentality. How to increase parental and community involvement during this extremely critical time for students? At GOOD Ideas for Cities RVA, the Kids Lead, Parents Follow...more »

Curmudgeon: Value-added measures don't measure up for Evaluation

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 13 minutes ago
Curmudgeon: Value-added measures don't measure up for Evaluation: Value-added measures don't measure up for Evaluation Labels: Testing Value-Added Measures don't make a good foundation for a teacher evaluation system. A comment on a Joanne Jacobs article: VAM measures the amount of improvement your students make. There are a number of ways to do this. Some of the early VAM methods were highly unstable. More sophisticated methods do seem to hold up well from year to year and also correlate with positive long term outcomes such as lower teen pregnancy rates and better education an... more »

Evaluating Teachers Using Student Test Scores: Value-added Measures (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 15 minutes ago
Evaluating Teachers Using Student Test Scores: Value-added Measures (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice: Evaluating Teachers Using Student Test Scores: Value-added Measures (Part 1) by larrycuban In most organizations, supervisors measure and evaluate employees’ performance. Consequences, both positive and negative, flow from the judgments they make. Not in public schools where supervisors have commonly judged over 95 percent of all teachers “satisfactory.” Such percentages clearly do not distinguish between effective and ineffective teaching. The refor... more »

A Closer Look at one of the Santa Cruz 11 « occupy california

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 21 minutes ago
A Closer Look at one of the Santa Cruz 11 « occupy california: A Closer Look at one of the Santa Cruz 11 by * from SantaCruz11: Desiree Foster, the youngest of the Santa Cruz Eleven, was arrested on February 8th as she and her boyfriend were leaving her home on her way to the Santa Cruz Courthouse in an attempt to quash her arrest warrant by agreeing to appear in court on a certain date. Instead, she spent the next nine hours sitting on plastic seating watching a deputy-controlled television set, having been arrested for two felony counts, conspiracy and vandalism, and two misdemea... more »

When is a Stop-and-Frisk a Violation of Constitutional Rights? « Student Activism

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 1 hour ago
When is a Stop-and-Frisk a Violation of Constitutional Rights? « Student Activism: When is a Stop-and-Frisk a Violation of Constitutional Rights? by Angus Johnston This afternoon I’ll be heading uptown for a march against the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policies. The stats on NYC stop and frisk are by now well known. Cops stopped 685,724 people in the city last year, of whom 84% were black or Latino. They conducted more stops of black boys and men aged 14-24 then there are people in that demographic category. Just 9% of all stops ended in an arrest and just 2% led to the recovery of a ... more »

Seven Thoughts on Bullying « Cooperative Catalyst

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 1 hour ago
Seven Thoughts on Bullying « Cooperative Catalyst: Seven Thoughts on Bullying by John T. Spencer I recently gave a keynote where I talked about personalized learning. In order to give a sense of the context, I shared my experience being bullied. I had decided the night before to scrap it from the presentation. I was afraid that they would pick up on insecurities that I might still have as an adult. Years later, even after counseling and dealing with it in healthy ways, I find myself wanting to hide the story. Instead, I told the story of being thrown into a locker and having my c... more »

How Gerard Robinson’s Lecture Ignited a Powerful Movement Against Florida’s High-Stakes Testing Regime | Scathing Purple Musings

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 2 hours ago
How Gerard Robinson’s Lecture Ignited a Powerful Movement Against Florida’s High-Stakes Testing Regime | Scathing Purple Musings: How Gerard Robinson’s Lecture Ignited a Powerful Movement Against Florida’s High-Stakes Testing Regime by Bob Sikes Save Duval Schools founder Deborah Gianoulis Heald attended the Florida School Boards Association meeting this week in Tampa. Here are her comments in a letter to the editor of the *Lakeland Ledger*: In Tampa on Thursday, I watched elected school board members from across the state in a conference exchange glances with clenched teeth or ... more »

Litigation almost a given with education reform | Shreveporttimes | shreveporttimes.com

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 2 hours ago
Litigation almost a given with education reform | Shreveporttimes | shreveporttimes.com: Litigation almost a given with education reform The debate over public school reform often ends up in court. Critics of Gov. Bobby Jindal's education legislation, passed by the Louisiana Legislature in April, already have filed lawsuits against it, citing violations of the state constitution and other matters. "It's almost a given that education reforms will be challenged by someone when you have a statewide voucher piece," said Kathy Christie, vice president of knowledge, information managemen... more »

Is This a Conflict of Interest? « Diane Ravitch's blog

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 2 hours ago
Is This a Conflict of Interest? « Diane Ravitch's blog: [image: Click on picture to Listen to Diane Ravitch] Is This a Conflict of Interest? by dianerav Last spring, Louisiana held a crucial election that determined who would control the state’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. Governor Bobby Jindal–the uber-conservative education reformer with a plan to replace public education with vouchers and charters–wanted to take control. He rallied his friends and allies to win the decisive seat on the board, which was held by a local attorney, Louella Givens. Jindal’s candidat... more »

After long legal fight, Sacramento City Unified has clear path for Waldorf-method schools - The Public Eye - The Sacramento Bee

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 2 hours ago
After long legal fight, Sacramento City Unified has clear path for Waldorf-method schools - The Public Eye - The Sacramento Bee: After long legal fight, Sacramento City Unified has clear path for Waldorf-method schools Share By Melody Gutierrez mgutierrez@sacbee.com Published: Sunday, Jun. 17, 2012 - 12:00 am | Page 1B After 14 years and more than half a million dollars in legal fees, Sacramento City Unified School District appears to have cleared its final hurdle in its fight to offer Waldorf-inspired instruction in its public schools. The nonprofit group – People for Legal and No... more »

Will Governor Andy Cuomo Show That He Has B*lls On Evaluations?

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 2 hours ago
http://www.southbronxschool.com: Will Governor Andy Cuomo Show That He Has Balls On Evaluations? by noreply@blogger.com (Bronx Teacher) What a horrible time to be Governor Andy. Here he is in the middle of a fight over releasing teachers evaluations. On one side he has teachers (not including the UFT because they already caved) and on the other side he has New York City super villain Uncle Mike and his henchman Sock Puppet Dennis Walcott wanting to shame and humiliate teachers in their ques to to diabolically take over the world of education. What is a governor to do? There was a g... more »

Sunday, NYC: Silent March to End Stop and Frisk | OccupyWallSt.org

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 2 hours ago
Sunday, NYC: Silent March to End Stop and Frisk | OccupyWallSt.org: Sunday, NYC: Silent March to End Stop and Frisk by OccupyWallSt [image: if you see something . . .] *via SilentMarchNYC.org:* The Silent March to End Stop and FriskJoin Civil Rights, Faith, Labor and Community groups in a silent march against NYC’s “Stop and Frisk” Policy! On Father’s Day, let’s stand together to show that New Yorkers refuse to let our children be victimized by racial profiling. *Father's Day* *Sunday, June 17th - march begins at 3 pm* *Assemble on West 110th St. between Central Park West/8th Ave. and... more »

Cursive slowly scribbled out of N.J. curriculums as computer skills gain value in schools | NJ.com

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 2 hours ago
Cursive slowly scribbled out of N.J. curriculums as computer skills gain value in schools | NJ.com: Cursive slowly scribbled out of N.J. curriculums as computer skills gain value in schoolsPublished: Sunday, June 17, 2012, 7:00 AM [image: Jeanette Rundquist/The Star-Ledger] By Jeanette Rundquist/The Star-Ledger [image: gawritingboy.JPG]The bulletin board at the front of Melissa Balzano’s classroom in West Orange is decorated with hand-written lists her students wrote in September, expressing their "Hopes and Dreams for Third Grade." For at least half the children in Balzan... more »

No Tests for Kids as Argued by a 4th Grader, PickyKidPix (daughter of Pragmatic Mom) « Cooperative Catalyst

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 2 hours ago
No Tests for Kids as Argued by a 4th Grader, PickyKidPix (daughter of Pragmatic Mom) « Cooperative Catalyst: No Tests for Kids as Argued by a 4th Grader, PickyKidPix (daughter of Pragmatic Mom) by Pragmatic Mom Everybody thinks tests are so good. Why? People think it is a good way to see a child’s smartness. Why can’t teachers and principals think of a different way? They are the ones who have spent most of their time working with the student, so they should know about the child. All it does is make the kid nervous, scared, and stressed. It doesn’t only cause this for the ki... more »

Daily Kos: Romney Horse Wins Spot on Olympic Dressage Team

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 13 hours ago
Daily Kos: Romney Horse Wins Spot on Olympic Dressage Team: Romney Horse Wins Spot on Olympic Dressage Team by rss@dailykos.com (teacherken) GLADSTONE, N.J. — Mitt Romney and his wife, Ann, who plan to attend the opening of the Olympic Games in London this summer, now have a personal rooting interest in the event.Jan Ebeling, Mrs. Romney’s longtime riding tutor, and his horse Rafalca, co-owned by Mrs. Romney, earned a berth on the United States Olympic dressage team on Saturday. Those are the two opening paragraphs of this New York Times story, posted this evening.So I wonder. Do... more »

Oakland School Closures: Sign the petition! | Dailycensored.com

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 13 hours ago
Oakland School Closures: Sign the petition! | Dailycensored.com: Oakland School Closures: Sign the petition! by Danny Weil “Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It’s like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won’t fatten the dog.” ~ Mark Twain People’s School for Public Education... *People’s School for Public Education* http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/i-support-the-lakeview-sit-in/ Every child deserves a quality neighborhood public school. The district has the power to keep Lakeview, Santa Fe, Marshall, Max... more »

Visioning Many Educational Paths | Lefty Parent

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 13 hours ago
Visioning Many Educational Paths | Lefty Parent: Visioning Many Educational Paths by Cooper Zale Angelajean and I founded our Daily KOS “Educational Alternatives” group because we both believe that our youth (and their families) would be much better served in their development if they had a wide range of educational options. Currently there are very few such options available to most young people, particularly those from families without the economic means to have sufficient discretionary income to spend on private schools. I wanted to restate the group’s goal, to hopefully recruit... more »

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Pro-Charter Campaign Started

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 16 hours ago
Seattle Schools Community Forum: Pro-Charter Campaign Started: Pro-Charter Campaign Started by Melissa Westbrook [image: DON'T SELL OUT AMERICA] A bit tepid, their website. It's called - big surprise - "Yes on 1240". (Interestingly, a web designer I know told me "No on 1240" domain name is taken - very clever. Only I don't think anyone would want it because, as the designer pointed out, it would read in the URL "noon1240".) There are several things to note about this website: There is *NO* link to the actual initiative. Why wouldn't you want people to be able to read what yo... more »

The future is now, in Louisiana, if corporate reformers get their way « Parents Across America

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 16 hours ago
The future is now, in Louisiana, if corporate reformers get their way « Parents Across America: The future is now, in Louisiana, if corporate reformers get their way by leoniehaimson Louisiana’s Governor is the radical right-winger Bobby Jindal, and its State Superintendent John White, trained under the Voldemort of education reform, Joel Klein. It has a state board of education whose most recently elected member is the state director of TFA, who ran a campaign funded by billionaire Bloomberg. Today, Diane Ravitch wrote about the philosophy behind Jindal and White’s privatizatio... more »

Portland's high dropout rate reveals illusion of success at big high schools (Diplomas denied, Part 1) | OregonLive.com

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 16 hours ago
Portland's high dropout rate reveals illusion of success at big high schools (Diplomas denied, Part 1) | OregonLive.com: Portland's high school dropout rate runs high at alternative schools (Diplomas denied, Part 1) by Betsy Hammond, The Oregonian [image: dropgraphic1.jpg] Portland Public Schools turns out more than 1,100 dropouts every year, largely because leaders have hidden that rampant failure from those best positioned to prevent it, an analysis by The Oregonian has found. That consigns one of every three young people who enter a Portland high school to a life of reduced ea... more »



Wait, What? - Bridgeport: $3.4 Million in return for your democratic rights: Illegal, Racist or Both

Wait, What? - Bridgeport: $3.4 Million in return for your democratic rights: Illegal, Racist or Both


Bridgeport: $3.4 Million in return for your democratic rights: Illegal, Racist or Both

School Tech Connect: Two Events in Chicago

School Tech Connect: Two Events in Chicago:


Two Events in Chicago

CTU is having a public meeting about contract negotiations on June 25th at Gage Park High School, 6:30 PM. (I posted the wrong date earlier.)

5630 S. Rockwell.

I'll be there. I have some questions.

Popout
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Also, there's this on the 26th.

Stand with Chicago Teachers


CTU Solidarity Committee Organizing Meeting
Tuesday, June 26
6:30 p.m.
Grace Place, 637 South Dearborn


The Labor Working Group, which brought together the Chicago Occupy movement and unions throughout city, would like to invite you and representatives from your union, school, or community group to a city-wide organizing meeting.  The goal of this meeting is to develop a solidarity committee in support of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) in their ongoing struggle for good schools and a decent contract.  The proposed committee will enable union and community groups to coordinate solidarity activities throughout the summer and fall in order to maximize our impact.

Since he came into office, Rahm Emanuel and his appointee, CPS CEO Jean Claude Brizard, have conducted a non-stop attack on CTU in an attempt to break the union and destroy public education.

It's now equally clear that the teachers are fed up and ready to fight back! The massive rally of teachers and union allies on May 23 through downtown Chicago, as well as the recent nearly unanimous strike authorization vote taken throughout the over 600 public schools, raises our hopes that if we fight, we can win, both in Chicago and around this country.

The outcome of the CTU struggle will have local and national ramifications for the fight against austerity, the defense of public education, and the future of the labor movement.  Now is the time for us to stand together!

Please join us on Tuesday, June 26, 6:30 p.m. at Grace Place, 637 S. Dearborn. Contact union.taskforce.occupychi@gmail.com to RSVP to this invitation and if you need more information. We look forward to seeing you there!


In solidarity,
Occupy Chicago Labor Working Work
union.taskforce.occupychi@gmail.com

GOOD Ideas for Cities: Increasing Involvement in Middle School - Cities - GOOD

GOOD Ideas for Cities: Increasing Involvement in Middle School - Cities - GOOD:


GOOD Ideas for Cities: Increasing Involvement in Middle School

Popout
Parents know they should be involved in their kids' education during elementary school, but as kids get older, parents become less engaged. The dropoff is greatest for the overlooked middle schools—even their names denote this neither-here-nor-there mentality. How to increase parental and community involvement during this extremely critical time for students? At GOOD Ideas for Cities RVA, the Kids Lead, Parents Follow team proposed several changes to the way parents think about middle school, and education in general. From 

Curmudgeon: Value-added measures don't measure up for Evaluation

Curmudgeon: Value-added measures don't measure up for Evaluation:


Value-added measures don't measure up for Evaluation


Value-Added Measures don't make a good foundation for a teacher  evaluation system.

A comment on a Joanne Jacobs article:
VAM measures the amount of improvement your students make. There are a number of ways to do this. Some of the early VAM methods were highly unstable. More sophisticated methods do seem to hold up well from year to year and also correlate with positive long term outcomes such as lower teen pregnancy rates and better education and employment as adults.

And here I thought I was supposed to be teaching math.

I don’t believe VA is anything on which to base bonus or termination. “Seem to correlate” does not mean “cause” … and that’s for the best measurements.

What of all the poor ones? “Some of the early VAM methods were highly unstable” ("Unstable" is a charitable term for "Any resemblance to a consistent reality is neither implied nor intended.") 

It means that the results cannot be trusted for grading the student who took them (that's stated plainly and explicitly in the administrator's notes) and it means that the test are worse at evaluating the teacher who didn't take them.

Evaluating Teachers Using Student Test Scores: Value-added Measures (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Evaluating Teachers Using Student Test Scores: Value-added Measures (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:


Evaluating Teachers Using Student Test Scores: Value-added Measures (Part 1)

In most organizations, supervisors measure and evaluate employees’ performance. Consequences, both positive and negative, flow from the judgments they make. Not in public schools where supervisors have commonly judged over 95 percent of all teachers “satisfactory.” Such percentages clearly do not distinguish between effective and ineffective teaching. The reform-driven agenda for the past decade that included testing, accountability, expanding parental choice through charter schools, and establishing a Common Core curriculum across the nation now includes in its to-do list distinguishing between good and poor teaching.[i]
The current generation of reform-driven policymakers, donors, and educational entrepreneurs are determined to sort out “good” from mediocre and poor teaching if for no other reason than identifying those high-performers who have had sustained effects on student learning and reward them with recognition, bonuses, and high salaries. They are equally determined to rid the teacher corps of persistently ineffective teachers.[ii]

A Closer Look at one of the Santa Cruz 11 « occupy california

A Closer Look at one of the Santa Cruz 11 « occupy california:


A Closer Look at one of the Santa Cruz 11

from SantaCruz11:
Desiree Foster, the youngest of the Santa Cruz Eleven, was arrested on February 8th as she and her boyfriend were leaving her home on her way to the Santa Cruz Courthouse in an attempt to quash her arrest warrant by agreeing to appear in court on a certain date. Instead, she spent the next nine hours sitting on plastic seating watching a deputy-controlled television set, having been arrested for two felony counts, conspiracy and vandalism, and two misdemeanor counts of trespass, with bail set at $5,000. Her mother, suffering from cancer, attempted to raise the $500 to bail out her daughter, when, inexplicably, Desiree was released on her own recognizance.
But the pressure of the felony charges, the financial instability of her family, and the fear and dread that she faced in dealing with her mother’s cancer, proved to be too much. Desiree took an overdose of pills and wound 

When is a Stop-and-Frisk a Violation of Constitutional Rights? « Student Activism

When is a Stop-and-Frisk a Violation of Constitutional Rights? « Student Activism:


When is a Stop-and-Frisk a Violation of Constitutional Rights?

This afternoon I’ll be heading uptown for a march against the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policies.
The stats on NYC stop and frisk are by now well known. Cops stopped 685,724 people in the city last year, of whom 84% were black or Latino. They conducted more stops of black boys and men aged 14-24 then there are people in that demographic category. Just 9% of all stops ended in an arrest and just 2% led to the recovery of a weapon, even though half included frisks and more than 20% involved the use of force.
But I don’t want to talk about any of that today. What I want to talk about is the constitution.
Under the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, adopted as part of the Bill of Rights in 1791, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.” What constitutes and “unreasonable” search or seizure under the Fourth 

Seven Thoughts on Bullying « Cooperative Catalyst

Seven Thoughts on Bullying « Cooperative Catalyst:


Seven Thoughts on Bullying

I recently gave a keynote where I talked about personalized learning. In order to give a sense of the context, I shared my experience being bullied. I had decided the night before to scrap it from the presentation. I was afraid that they would pick up on insecurities that I might still have as an adult.
Years later, even after counseling and dealing with it in healthy ways, I find myself wanting to hide the story. Instead, I told the story of being thrown into a locker and having my clothes stolen and the sense of despair that I felt in the midst of it.
So, it has me thinking of advice I would give teachers on how to deal with the issue of bullying. Here are a few thoughts:
  1. Know Your Students: It’s hard to find the victims. It is hard to explain the sheer terror of bullying. Your world stops. You feel edgy. It’s harder, still, to explain the shame that results. You feel weak. You have this lingering cycle of, “What’s wrong with me that I’m being targeted?” It’s that shame that keeps bullying secretive. In my case, I wasn’t afraid of speaking out because of retribution. I was afraid of speaking out, because I was afraid of being known.
  2. Be Vulnerable: I never told an adult, because I never knew of any adults who were bullied. The school 

How Gerard Robinson’s Lecture Ignited a Powerful Movement Against Florida’s High-Stakes Testing Regime | Scathing Purple Musings

How Gerard Robinson’s Lecture Ignited a Powerful Movement Against Florida’s High-Stakes Testing Regime | Scathing Purple Musings:


How Gerard Robinson’s Lecture Ignited a Powerful Movement Against Florida’s High-Stakes Testing Regime

Save Duval Schools founder Deborah Gianoulis Heald attended the Florida School Boards Association meeting this week in Tampa. Here are her comments in a letter to the editor of the Lakeland Ledger:
In Tampa on Thursday, I watched elected school board members from across the state in a conference exchange glances with clenched teeth or open-mouth surprise. The reason: Florida Education Commissioner Gerard Robinson admonished them for considering a resolution against high-stakes testing.
Robinson told them the Constitution guarantees their rights as individuals to free expression but, as members of elected bodies, their responsibility is to follow the law established by the 

Litigation almost a given with education reform | Shreveporttimes | shreveporttimes.com

Litigation almost a given with education reform | Shreveporttimes | shreveporttimes.com:


Litigation almost a given with education reform


The debate over public school reform often ends up in court.
Critics of Gov. Bobby Jindal's education legislation, passed by the Louisiana Legislature in April, already have filed lawsuits against it, citing violations of the state constitution and other matters.
"It's almost a given that education reforms will be challenged by someone when you have a statewide voucher piece," said Kathy Christie, vice president of knowledge, information management and dissemination for the Education Commission of the States in Denver.
The Louisiana Association of Educators and the Louisiana Federation of Teachers have filed lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the education package, which among other things spends public school funds on tuition at private schools and alters the public school funding formula.
Louisiana Superintendent of Education John C. White, the architect of 

Is This a Conflict of Interest? « Diane Ravitch's blog

Is This a Conflict of Interest? « Diane Ravitch's blog:

Click on picture to Listen to Diane Ravitch



Is This a Conflict of Interest?

Last spring, Louisiana held a crucial election that determined who would control the state’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.
Governor Bobby Jindal–the uber-conservative education reformer with a plan to replace public education with vouchers and charters–wanted to take control.
He rallied his friends and allies to win the decisive seat on the board, which was held by a local attorney, Louella Givens. Jindal’s candidate was Kira Orange Jones, the director of TFA in New Orleans.


Four-Step Demolition Polka in North Carolina

An article describing the situation in North Carolina defines the four steps needed to attack and dismantle public education. It is a scenario based on ALEC model legislation, which is now being faithfully implemented in many states.
Step one is to cut the budget of the public schools.
Step two is to divert public school money to privately-managed charter schools.


This Teacher Says No Thanks to the Galvanic Skin Response Bracelet

Readers of this blog are aware of the controversy surrounding the Gates-funded research into the uses of a device to monitor students’ and possibly teachers’ physiological reactions in the classroom. The device is called a “galvanic skin response” monitor. It would be a bracelet with wireless sensor that students would wear to measure how engaged or disengaged they are while in class. The Gates Foundation has spent $1.4 million to sponsor research on this project at Clemson, the National Commission on Time & Learning, and some other unnamed facility. The Clemson grant was described on the Gates website as part of the MET project, implying that it would be used to evaluate teachers, but the foundation said that was not correct and changed the description on the website.
There has been quite a lively discussion of this research on my blog, with a few people saying they welcomed


Is Pennsylvania the Worst State?

When I asked readers to tell me about the reforms in their own state, I received dozens of replies.
It is hard to say which state has the most destructive reforms. By destructive, I refer to legislation that is anti-teacher, anti-public education, anti-education, and anti-child. This means legislation that strips teachers of any job protections and that prohibits them from bargaining collectively, as well as legislation that bases teacher evacuation on student test scores and that hands public school dollars over to private interests, whether for profit or for private management.
This writer describes what is happening in Pennsylvania, under Tea-Party governor Tom Corbett, who seems determined to rid the state of public education:
In Pennsylvania Governor Corbett has been following the ALEC script to the letter. This year he cut education

How Should Art Be Assessed?

In a piece in Education Week, Sara Mead maintains that art can be assessed through multiple-choice standardized tests.
In defense of multiple-choice testing of the arts, she writes:
The point of arts education shouldn’t be to teach children to simply “enjoy art”–we are, after all free to choose which art we enjoy, or whether we enjoy it at all. Rather, it should be to give children the skills and background knowledge to experience art or music in an informed and more than superficial sense–much of which is about understanding and identifying concepts, vocabulary, and techniques in ways that can be assessed through multiple choice assessments. A major reason that high-quality education needs to include the arts is certain arts-related information–such as names and work of key artists and composers, specific musical or artistic vocabulary and meanings, and artistic movements over time and their relationship to broader historical and 

After long legal fight, Sacramento City Unified has clear path for Waldorf-method schools - The Public Eye - The Sacramento Bee

After long legal fight, Sacramento City Unified has clear path for Waldorf-method schools - The Public Eye - The Sacramento Bee:


After long legal fight, Sacramento City Unified has clear path for Waldorf-method schools

Published: Sunday, Jun. 17, 2012 - 12:00 am | Page 1B

After 14 years and more than half a million dollars in legal fees, Sacramento City Unified School District appears to have cleared its final hurdle in its fight to offer Waldorf-inspired instruction in its public schools.
The nonprofit group – People for Legal and Non-Sectarian Schools, or PLANS Inc. – sued the district in 1998, alleging that Waldorf schools teach the religion anthroposophy and thus should be barred from public funding.
Anthroposophy is a philosophy of Waldorf method founder Rudolf Steiner that supporters say is meant to encourage personal thought and self-reflection.
"The PLANS case started with: Is anthroposophy a religion?" said Allegra Alessandri, a longtime Waldorf educator who now teaches at a Waldorf- inspired high school in Sacramento City Unifie

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/06/17/4567557/gfhgjkfhghfjghdfjgfd.html#storylink=cpy

Will Governor Andy Cuomo Show That He Has B*lls On Evaluations?

http://www.southbronxschool.com:


Will Governor Andy Cuomo Show That He Has Balls On Evaluations?

What a horrible time to be Governor Andy. Here he is in the middle of a fight over releasing teachers evaluations. On one side he has teachers (not including the UFT because they already caved) and on the other side he has New York City super villain Uncle Mike and his henchman Sock Puppet Dennis Walcott wanting to shame and humiliate teachers in their ques to to diabolically take over the world of education. What is a governor to do?

There was a glimmer of hope, a glimmer of maturity from Governor Andy for a brief second in yesterday's Daily News. Governor Andy in his best transliteration of Mario said;
“To those people I say, really? Disclose all the evaluations for public 

Sunday, NYC: Silent March to End Stop and Frisk | OccupyWallSt.org

Sunday, NYC: Silent March to End Stop and Frisk | OccupyWallSt.org:


Sunday, NYC: Silent March to End Stop and Frisk

if you see something . . .
via SilentMarchNYC.org:

The Silent March to End Stop and Frisk

Join Civil Rights, Faith, Labor and Community groups in a silent march against NYC’s “Stop and Frisk” Policy! On Father’s Day, let’s stand together to show that New Yorkers refuse to let our children be victimized by racial profiling.
Father's Day
Sunday, June 17th - march begins at 3 pm
Assemble on West 110th St. between Central Park West/8th Ave. and Fifth Ave.
- Enter the assembly area from the west or from the north, NOT from the east!
- You can begin gathering as early as 1pm, but remember - the march starts at 3 pm!

Cursive slowly scribbled out of N.J. curriculums as computer skills gain value in schools | NJ.com



Cursive slowly scribbled out of N.J. curriculums as computer skills gain value in schools | NJ.com:


Cursive slowly scribbled out of N.J. curriculums as computer skills gain value in schools

Published: Sunday, June 17, 2012, 7:00 AM






gawritingboy.JPGThe bulletin board at the front of Melissa Balzano’s classroom in West Orange is decorated with hand-written lists her students wrote in September, expressing their "Hopes and Dreams for Third Grade."
For at least half the children in Balzano’s class at Mount Pleasant Elementary School, learning cursive topped the list.
"It’s fancy writing," said Naomi Toms, 9. Cursive was once a mainstay of elementary schools, where children practiced the "tripod" pencil grip and the looping strokes of the letters. But these days little classroom time is spent teaching cursive writing, crowded out of the curriculum by the demands of an increasingly complex world.
Beyond that, some educators are asking whether the current generation of kids even needs to know how to write in longhand, given the reality of a world ruled by the keyboard.
The national Common Core State Standards, a set of academic standards adopted by New Jersey 

No Tests for Kids as Argued by a 4th Grader, PickyKidPix (daughter of Pragmatic Mom) « Cooperative Catalyst

No Tests for Kids as Argued by a 4th Grader, PickyKidPix (daughter of Pragmatic Mom) « Cooperative Catalyst:


No Tests for Kids as Argued by a 4th Grader, PickyKidPix (daughter of Pragmatic Mom)

Everybody thinks tests are so good.  Why?  People think it is a good way to see a child’s smartness.  Why can’t teachers and principals  think of a different way?  They are the ones who have spent most of their time working with the student, so they should know about the child.  All it does is make the kid nervous, scared, and stressed. It doesn’t only cause this for the kid, it can also create these feelings for the teacher.  It is sometimes scary for the teacher even though they are not the ones doing the test.  Many teachers feel if the student does not do well, it is their own fault.   No one notices it but taking tests is just wasting time.  Why should you review when you can learn new things.  That is why I think kids should not have to take test.
Kids should not have to take test because you are doing the same thing over again in test form.  I was handing