PSAT for 7-3-12: Call for equality (especially in the schools) Parents United for Responsible Education

Parents United for Responsible Education » Blog Archive » PSAT for 7-3-12: Call for equality (especially in the schools):

PSAT for 7-3-12: Call for equality (especially in the schools)

by admin

For our nation’s birthday – let’s give some thought to what it really means to be a great nation.
(I’m trying to take a little work break in honor of July 4th so I’m just going to share the most recent Action of the Week from the Parents Across America June 28 newsletter.)
The Supreme Court has upheld the federal healthcare reform law. My long-time friend and PURE colleague Johnny Ho;mes said to me that by next year, people will simply be calling Obamacare “healthcare.”
Can we really turn the corner and become a nation that offers its people medical care regardless of status or situation? If we can do that, can we also turn off the message from the “reformers” that it’s OK to offer children different educational opportunities based on their status and situation?
The so-called education “debate” is really just a one-sided propaganda campaign

More elected school board petition drive dates

by admin

From Parents 4 Teachers:
Elected School Board Campaign Needs YOU This Week
We need your help this week, next week and the rest of July to circulate petitions to get a referendum for an elected school board on the November ballot.

• Thursday, July 5: Logan Square, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Meet at the Starbucks on California and Logan Blvd.

• Thursday, July 5: West Town, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Meet at 2002 W. Superior.

• Tuesday, July 10: West Rogers Park, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Meet at 6635  N. Mozart.

Please email info@parents4teachers.net if you can help out on any of these nights! YOU are the key to this campaign’s success!
Looks Like We’re Getting Under Their Skin
CPS Board President David Vitale was forced to respond to parents’ demands last week after P4T and other groups held a press conference and testified at the June 27 board meeting asking for smaller classes, a better (not just longer!) day, fair compensation and protections for teachers, and improved school facilities.
Read the Sun-Times coverage of the event. The board says it doesn’t have the money to provide all the things parents and teachers want for their schools.  Call CPS at 773-553-1500 and tell them to get their priorities straight and fund the things our kids need most!
Please share this email with your friends!
For more info, visit www.parents4teachers.net

LSC training by Wanda

by admin

You know she’s the best. PURE’s Wanda Hopkins will be offering LSC lessons 1 and 2 on Thursday, July 19 from 9 to 1 pm at Leslie Lewis school, 1431 N Leamington Ave.
All LSC members are welcome. Please let her know you are coming by sending an e-mail to wjhoppo4@yahoo.com.
There will be no charge for this training.
If you would like to have Wanda come out to your school for LSC training, please e-mail or call her (773-663-5420). Your LSC can donate some of your :SC trainign money to help defray our costs. We would also like to be able to invite other LSC members to join in any other training that Wanda offers.

Why Elected Local School Boards Matter « Diane Ravitch's blog

Why Elected Local School Boards Matter « Diane Ravitch's blog:

Why Elected Local School Boards Matter

by dianerav

Lance Hill in New Orleans knows what it is like to have no democratic control of schools funded with taxpayer dollars (so do people in New York City, but that’s another topic).
He writes:

Local democratic control of schools is the last remaining obstacle to the complete privatization of public education. For that reason alone, the movement to save public education needs to make this a central program tenet.Locally elected boards are the only entity that has the mission of keeping public schools public. They have a vested interest in retaining public control of schools and ensuring quality education since their actions directly impact local community life. That don’t always live up to that mission, but democracy allows us to hold them accountable. State control is no different than federal control since  For the Children? by dianerav A note from a teacher who was one of those rehired for a turnaround school. Thank you, Michael Bloomberg and Arne Duncan, for the unnecessary damage you inflict on schools, communities, students and teachers, all the while publicly proclaiming that it’s “for the children.” Yesterday I made a sojourn into my school, one of the 24 closing schools. (I say my school because I was hired back although the bloodletting that followed the ridiculous interview process fills one with survival guilt.) I called first to make sure the building was open and was told “Yes” and headed in to feed my classroom fish.When I arrived at school you would have thought I was trying to penetrate the Pentagon or CIA. I was told by  Memphis: Stand for Children Responds by dianerav I received the following comment from Kenya Bradshaw, the executive director of Stand for Children in Tennessee. She was responding to the posts about the transition plan for merging Shelby County and Memphis. The transition plan envisions an expansion of the number and proportion of students in privately managed charter schools, from 4% to 19%, and a transfer of $212 million out of the Memphis public school budget. Ms. Bradshaw seems to be a sincere and committed person, and I suspect she has no idea of the enmity that Jonah Edelman of Stand for Children generated by his performance a year ago at the Aspen Ideas Festival, when he boasted of stripping away job protections from teachers in Illinois, specifically in Chicago. Or the enmity he created when he launched a campaign in Massachusetts to eliminate teacher job protections. Or the enmity he gained by converting Stand for Children into a multi-million dollar corporate organization that advocates for privatization as well as the reduction of teachers’ job status. There was a time when Stand for Children was a

Joe Biden To Teachers: Mitt Romney Thinks You're Selfish

Joe Biden To Teachers: Mitt Romney Thinks You're Selfish:

Joe Biden To Teachers: Mitt Romney Thinks You're Selfish

by Joy Resmovits

Vice President Joe Biden thinks that teachers face a "fullblown assault" thanks to people like Mitt Romney.

"I can't think of a candidate for president who's ever made such a direct assault on such an honorable profession," Biden said at the National Education Association's annual convention, in front of thousands of teachers in Washington, D.C. Tuesday morning.

Romney and Republicans, Biden asserted, want to increase the influence of private schools "and strip you of your voice because he doesn't think you know much about education, and he characterizes you as not caring about the students but caring about yourselves."

Biden made these points in a speech he called an "honest-to-God" conversation about the differences between 

FCMAT » Cali Education Headlines Tuesday, July 3, 2012

FCMAT » Fiscal Crisis & Management Assistance Team:

Mono Lake Tufa SNR

Education Headlines

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

The story behind school superintendent's dubious degree

In July 1996, FBI agents raided a nondescript office building beside a church in Mandeville, La., a small town near New Orleans. That long-ago raid, half a nation away, came home late this spring when questions were raised at a school board meeting about the educational attainment of Columbia Union School District Superintendent John Pendley.

SF Superintendent Carlos Garcia ends 37-year career

For a city accustomed to a school district plagued by scandal and a school board prone to histrionics and hissy fits, the five-year term under Superintendent Carlos Garcia by comparison has been one big San Francisco snooze fest. The retiring Garcia, who officially ends his 37-year career in public education Tuesday, has arguably been one of the most boring school chiefs this city has ever seen.

Castro Valley schools face $4.3 million deficit

Castro Valley Unified School District faces a $4.3 million structural deficit for the coming school year. Superintendent Jim Negri said the shortfall is a result of the district not receiving the money it should be getting from the state.

Second year of science remains a mandate

Advocates of strengthening – or at least not weakening – the teaching of math and science won a partial victory in the final budget that Gov. Brown signed last week. A second year of science for high school graduation remains a state mandate, at the Legislature’s insistence, contrary to Brown’s proposal to make it optional.

Judge nullifies statewide charter granted to Aspire

A Superior Court judge in Alameda County has thrown out the State Board of Education’s approval for Aspire Public Schools to open charters throughout the state, bypassing local school districts. Judge Jo-Lynne Lee has given Aspire a year to obtain local charters for the half-dozen schools it now operates under the State Board’s authority.

LAUSD rejects all inspector general candidates

The Los Angeles Unified board has rejected all of the finalists to succeed the district's retiring inspector general and will launch another nationwide recruiting drive for candidates, officials said Monday.

Blue Ox school marches on, despite budget crunch

Since 1999, Blue Ox Community School has taken about 25 kids a year and put them through a rigorous academic program that pairs a traditional curriculum with a craft-based one that teaches traditional skills like woodworking, blacksmithing, typesetting and more.

School year could be cut by 20 days if tax initiative fails

Humboldt County school districts will be able to consider slashing up to 20 days from the school year if California voters do not approve Gov. Jerry Brown's proposed tax measure in November, the county superintendent of schools said.

Monday, July 2, 2012

School districts get $52M to pay for controversial construction plan

Two Coachella Valley school districts have received about $52 million for school construction projects from the state allocation board.

O.C.'s public face of education retires

For the past decade, Bill Habermehl has served as the unofficial Ed McMahon of the Orange County education scene, bursting into classrooms with balloons and cameras and an entourage to deliver trophies and $15,000 checks to Orange County's Teachers of the Year. Habermehl, 69, an unabashed cheerleader and champion of Orange County schools, retired Friday after 11 years as county schools superintendent.

Outgoing Twin Rivers trustee finds vindication in grand jury report

After years of being dismissed as an ill-informed troublemaker, Twin Rivers Unified School District outgoing trustee Alecia Eugene-Chasten is feeling more than vindicated in the wake of Thursday's release of a critical grand

Clock is ticking on pay for Sweetwater boss

Sweetwater schools Superintendent Ed Brand — just approved to stay on through December at $20,000 a month — might not do so.

With A Brooklyn Accent: The Battle Against Corporate School Reform Must Be Waged Locally Before It Can Succeed Natinonally

With A Brooklyn Accent: The Battle Against Corporate School Reform Must Be Waged Locally Before It Can Succeed Natinonally:

The Battle Against Corporate School Reform Must Be Waged Locally Before It Can Succeed Natinonally

For the foreseeable future, the battle to save public education from uncontrolled testing and Corporate control will not be won at the national level. Both political parties are in the pockets of the Billionaire reformers, and the national leadership of teachers unions are desperately trying to save their organizations by making compromises that will leave them free to fight another day, if in fact there is anything left worth fighting for. This means that teachers, students and parents are on their own in challenging policies which dumb down the curriculum, undermine creative thinking, squeeze out the arts, and put young people’s health at risk by eliminating physical activity both during and after school. Every policy being promoted nationally, by both political parties, 

The Arrogance of Privilege

The Arrogance of Privilege:

The Arrogance of Privilege

Tuesday, 03 July 2012 11:39By P.L. Thomas, The Daily Censored | News Analysis

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Charles Blow has offered a recent video of a disturbing account of bullying on a bus captured on video and posted to YouTube: "The video shows Karen Klein, a 68-year-old grandmother and bus monitor in upstate New York, being relentlessly tormented by a group of young boys."

"But what, if anything, does this say about society at large?" asks Blow, adding:

"Many things one could argue, but, for me, it is a remarkably apt metaphor for this moment in the American discourse in which hostility has been drawn out into the sunlight.

"Those boys are us, or at least too many of us: America at its ugliest. It is that part of society that sees the weak and vulnerable as worthy of derision and animus.

"This kind of behavior is not isolated to children and school buses and suburban 

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Cleveland's corporate reform bill signed by Kasich

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Cleveland's corporate reform bill signed by Kasich:

Cleveland's corporate reform bill signed by Kasich

by Mike Klonsky

Ohio Tea-Party Gov. John Kasich and Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson hug after Jackson talked about the agreement that was reached on the Cleveland reform plan. (Plain Dealer)

Privatizers' dream, union goes along

Two things are predictable when states pass school reform laws that only apply to one city. First, that city has a largely poor, black and brown school population and second, the reform is more about privatization, charter 

Sample Policies and Implementation Plans - School Environment (CA Dept of Education)

Sample Policies and Implementation Plans - School Environment (CA Dept of Education):

Sample Policies and Implementation Plans

Model policies and plans on the prevention of bullying and on conflict resolution that were developed by the California Department of Education as resources to help California schools address these vital school safety concerns.

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To ensure that the California schools act promptly to resolve disputes, taunting, harassment, intimidation, or bullying that could result in violence, the Legislature and the Governor enacted Assembly Bill 9. This bill amends California Education Codesections 234, 234.1, 234.2, and 234.3, and adds Section 234.5.

The California Department of Education developed the following policies as resources to help California schools address these vital school safety concerns. School districts may adapt these policies to local needs and are encouraged to include:

• Examples of strategies used in their schools for promoting positive behavior being practiced by its school community,
• Training conducted for teachers and staff about how to appropriately intervene in a dispute, including expectations from adults who observe a dispute or act of taunting, harassment, or bullying,
• Conflict resolution or peer mediation training provided to students and expectations of students who observe disputes that could lead to violence, including identifying the person(s) to be contacted if needed.

Sample Policy for Bullying Prevention

Sample Action Plan for Local Educational Agencies

Questions: Stephanie Papas | spapas@cde.ca.gov | 916-445-8441 

Stand for Children on Education Radio | Seattle Education

Stand for Children on Education Radio | Seattle Education:

Stand for Children on Education Radio

by seattleducation2011

In December of 2011, one of the programs on Education Radio focused on Stand for Children.
With the Gates funded organizations Stand for Children (SFC) and the League of Education Voters (LEV) pushing for charter schools in our state and campaigning for state legislative candidates who are pro ed-reform, it seemed appropriate to once again take a look at this organization.
To follow is the introduction to the radio show:
Stand for Children or Stand for Profit?
On this week’s show we take a look at Stand for Children, an organization that defines its mission as one of 

Missouri Education Watchdog: Career Tracking for Kindergartners. Parody or Fact?

Missouri Education Watchdog: Career Tracking for Kindergartners. Parody or Fact?:

Career Tracking for Kindergartners. Parody or Fact?

by stlgretchen

ACT assesses kindergartners for college/career track so they can reach full potential?

Is this from The Onion or fact?

WASHINGTON -- A new digital tool to test academic and behavioral skills will target students starting in kindergarten.

ACT, the organization that developed the ACT college-entrance exam, will start testing the tool in the fall. It will be available to schools starting in 2014.The tool tracks students' career interests, academic performance and progress toward goals. It's designed to follow students from kindergarten through 

NYC Educator: Screw You Guys, I'm Going Home

NYC Educator: Screw You Guys, I'm Going Home:

Screw You Guys, I'm Going Home

by NYC Educator

NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, pictured at left, says the arbitrator exceeded his authority when he ruled for the union. The arbitrator, according to Mayor4Life, should not have considered the union's arguments. Evidently, the city feels its opponents have no authority to make arguments, let alone have them heard, and that only the city's arguments should be considered. Listen to our side, ignore the other, and then make an informed decision.

There is precedent for that, of course. The city has a fake school board, called the PEP. On this board, Mayor Bloomberg has 8 of 13 votes, and if he gets wind anyone is going to vote against him, he fires those people before they even get a chance. That's why the PEP has never, ever voted against him. This, in Mayor Bloomberg's view, represents democracy. After all, he has all that money, so how could he possibly be wrong about anything?

In the Mayor's view, evidently, when you enter into binding arbitration, it's only binding if you win. If you lose, the 

Lakeview Elementary Raided « occupy california

Lakeview Elementary Raided « occupy california:

Lakeview Elementary Raided

by *

OAKLAND, California – The Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) shut the doors to 5 elementary schools in June reportedly due to budget cuts. As community members including teachers and parents first heard about the proposed shuttering of the schools over a year ago, they began organizing against the school closures. The 5 schools closed were all in areas of the city home to low-income families of color.
On June 15, parents, teachers and some children established a camp outside the Lakeview Elementary campus in protest. In a matter of days, demonstrators reopened the school building and established a summer program 

More on Memphis: Jim Horn Responds « Diane Ravitch's blog

More on Memphis: Jim Horn Responds « Diane Ravitch's blog:

More on Memphis: Jim Horn Responds

by dianerav

In my post about the Memphis-Shelby County schools yesterday, I quoted Jim Horn of Schools Matter. Horn was extremely critical of the plan to increase the proportion of students in charters from 4% to 19%, resulting in a $212 transfer of public school funding from the Memphis public schools to private hands.
A comment on the web site was highly critical of Horn and said he knew nothing about the plan or its supporters.
As a resident of Shelby County, former teacher, parent, and director of Stand for Children in Memphis, I take offense to the unbased reflection you present here about the merger of Memphis City and Shelby County Schools.
The plan you speak of was intentionally vetted through over 14,000 people in the community and led by 21 community volunteers on the Transition Planning Commission. Yes, one of them was Stand’s Executive Director 

Trouble in New Orleans Charter Paradise

by dianerav

Down in New Orleans, which corporate reformers treat as a model for the nation, there’s trouble.
One of the charter groups, called the Algiers Charter Schools Association, is in hot water with parents. Algiers has eight charters, enrolling over 5,000 students. It recently lost its CEO and hired an interim chief academic officer, Aamir Raza, from New York City to implement changes. Raza is a management consultant (not an educator, needless to say) who had worked for the New York City Department of Education charter office.
Algiers has this problem: Some of its charters are high-flying (a 93-97% pass rate on the state tests) and some do very poorly (a 7% pass rate on the same test). Critics in New Orleans attribute the disparity to a conscious

Follow the Money

by dianerav

If you want to know why so many politicians think so highly of charters, there is a basic rule of  politics that explains it all: Follow the money.
The most visible organization promoting corporate reform is called Democrats for Education Reform, known as DFER (commonly pronounced “D-fer”). DFER is the Wall Street hedge fund managers’ group. It always has a few non-hedge funders on the board, especially one or two prominent African-Americans, to burnish its pretentious claim of leading the civil rights movement of our day. Kevin Chavous, a former council member from Washington, D.C., fills that role for now, along with the DFER stalwart, Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark. DFER has its own

The Lie Behind “College for All”

by dianerav

Teachers provide a reality check to the grandest of visions.
The grand vision of our time is that every student should go to college. If everyone goes to college, everyone will have high wages. Poverty will end because everyone went to college.
This is fallacious reasoning. If everyone has a college diploma, then a college diploma will be as valuable as a high school diploma is today. The more diplomas there are, the more they become an entry-level requirement. As readers have noticed in my recent blogs, college graduates who work at Apple stores are making $12 an hour

A Case for Local Control

by dianerav

A reader explains why local control works in her community’s public schools. She realizes the downside of local control. She knows that local control can be a way of maintaining ignorance and rejecting science and knowledge. But there is a danger in standardization, and she explains why we must seek to find the right balance between the forces of localism and the forces of standardization. If we don’t, we lose something of value.

Local control also allows for some pretty different and interesting curricula options. Our local high school, a rural school in California, has a vineyard, an orchard, pigs, and sheep. The program is very successful at this school. I daresay if I proposed this as a statewide standard and suggested that LAUSD implement it at all their high Chaos in 24 NYC Turnaround Schools by dianerav On Friday, an independent arbitrator issued a binding ruling to stop the “turnaround” of 24 schools, where some 3,500 teachers lost their jobs so that the city could claim federal School Improvement Grant funding. The federal program requires that the principal and at least half the teachers be fired; the school gets a new name, and voila! All is transformed, turned around due to the magic of mass firings. But the arbitrator agreed with the union that its contract had been violated. Mayor Bloomberg, however, is not one to be easily deterred. So he announced not only that he is suing to More on Local Control by dianerav I have always had mixed feelings about local control. On one hand, I think it is very important for people to feel a sense of pride, belonging, ownership, and engagement in their local school. On the other, I don’t want the school to reflect nothing more than what the local people already know and believe. That way, no one every learns anything new or is challenged to rethink what they know. Education is about tradition but it is also about encountering and grappling with new ideas. So, I don’t want to seem wishy-washy, but I recognize that there is merit to both sides of the argument and that, as in so many things, a sensible balance is needed between the forces of localism and those who push against localism. I should add that, these days, I find no case to be made for federal control of curriculum, as the federal bureaucrats are even less thoughtful, less imaginative, and more rule-bound than their local counterparts. At

Ex-Jindal aide disputes suits | News | The Advocate — Baton Rouge, LA

School bill actions defended | News | The Advocate — Baton Rouge, LA:

School bill actions defended

Show caption

Ex-Jindal aide disputes suits

BY WILL SENTELL

Capitol news bureau

July 03, 2012

5 COMMENTS

Gov. Bobby Jindal’s former executive counsel, who is defending Jindal’s public school overhaul measures, said in court filings that the Legislature acted properly when it approved a bill that expands Louisiana’s voucher program.

Lawsuits by the Louisiana Federation of Teachers, among others, contend that the voucher measure and one that makes it harder for teachers to earn and retain tenure are unconstitutional because they illegally bundled what should have been multiple education proposal

Gerard Robinson Takes Another Stab At Spinning Florida’s Status Quo Test Regime | Scathing Purple Musings

Gerard Robinson Takes Another Stab At Spinning Florida’s Status Quo Test Regime | Scathing Purple Musings:

Gerard Robinson Takes Another Stab At Spinning Florida’s Status Quo Test Regime

by Bob Sikes

Gradebook’s Jeff Solochek provides the link to Florida Education Commissioner Gerard Robinson’s letter to the state’s parents. While observers of Florida education policy will find much to challenge, it is these two paragraphs which are most critical to Robinson and his handlers:

The combination of changes to Florida’s accountability system will cause a temporary drop in some school grades. However, we can also expect student performance to improve as it did in 2007 when Florida made revisions to the school grading formula. At first, the number of A and B schools fell from about 2,000 to 1,952, but, in the two years that followed, A and B schools rose to 

Daily Kos: Welcome to the rest of our lives.

Daily Kos: Welcome to the rest of our lives.:

Welcome to the rest of our lives.

by rss@dailykos.com (teacherken)

Still don’t believe in climate change? Then you’re either deep in denial or delirious from the heat.

So begins Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Eugene Robinson in Eugene Robinson: Feeling the heat, an opinion piece in today's Washington Post.Like me, Robinson lives in Arlington County, right across the Potomac from the District of Columbia, and I periodically see him in a local supermarket.  It has power from a generator truck, but as I write this, the rest of that strip mall remains dark, now into a 4th consecutive day.
At the peak of blackout, more than  half the electric customers in the DC metro area were dark - in Arlington, it was 42,000 of 59,000 residences.
As Robinson notes of the day the storms hit (after 9 PM), it was 104 degrees on Friday, the hottest June day on