Modern School: LAUSD Lays Down Hammer on Evaluations

Modern School: LAUSD Lays Down Hammer on Evaluations:

LAUSD Lays Down Hammer on Evaluations

by Michael Dunn

Image from Flickr by r8r

Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has filed a declaration of impasse, according to the Daily News, after failed negotiations with United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) over a new teacher evaluation system based on student test scores. LAUSD is under court order to revise its evaluation system by December 4. However, Superior Court Judge James Chalfant has mandated that the district negotiate with the union over the new system.

UTLA President Warren Fletcher said last week that his 40,000-member union was engaged in "good-faith bargaining with LAUSD officials over developing a fair and effective teacher evaluation system.” This, of course, is typical union mumbo jumbo meant to convince the public 

Likely Romney Policy on DREAMers is Causing Trouble Already « Student Activism

Likely Romney Policy on DREAMers is Causing Trouble Already « Student Activism:

Likely Romney Policy on DREAMers is Causing Trouble Already

by Angus Johnston

Many undocumented immigrants eligible for a reprieve from deportation under the Obama administration’s DREAM Act-inspired policy shift are choosing not to apply because of fears of their applications being used against them if Mitt Romney wins the presidency.
In June President Obama announced that he would be establishing a process by which those young people who would be eligible for permanent residency and eventual citizenship under the DREAM Act — those brought to the US by the age of 15 who completed two years of college or enlisted in the military — could apply for a pre-emptive deferral of deportation proceedings. The policy, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), took effect in August.
The administration’s shift followed directly on the mounting of a series of increasingly high profile occupations of Obama campaign offices by DREAM Act-eligible activists.

TheDartmouth.com: Lewis leads Chicago Teachers Union

TheDartmouth.com: Lewis leads Chicago Teachers Union:

Lewis leads Chicago Teachers Union

Chicago Teachers’ Union President Karen Lewis ’74 has been at the center of recent education reform battles, leading the recent Chicago teachers’ strike.

COURTESY OF CHICAGO MAGAZINE

By Ashley Ulrich, The Dartmouth Staff

Published on Monday, October 22, 2012

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Former Chicago public school chemistry teacher and Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis ’74 is strongly committed to her ideas for education reform and said she is not afraid to make sure that her message is heard. Lewis recently led the CTU’s 26,000 members in a strike for the first time.

The strike left Chicago’s 350,000 students — comprising the third-largest school district in the nation — out of class for seven school days from Sept. 9-17. It also brought Lewis to the forefront of national media coverage amid her public standoff with Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who formerly served as White House chief of staff under President Barack Obama.

The strike represented a strong statement by the teachers against recent limitations to their 

Education reform leader backs plan to appoint Bridgeport Board of Ed - Connecticut Post

Education reform leader backs plan to appoint Bridgeport Board of Ed - Connecticut Post:

Education reform leader backs plan to appoint Bridgeport Board of Ed

Bill Cummings

Updated 11:26 p.m., Sunday, October 21, 2012

Ed Reform's Corporate Cash Kids

BRIDGEPORT -- A national leader in education reform Sunday offered his support for the city's plan to replace the elected Board of Education with a new board appointed by the mayor.

"This is not about giving up your vote," said Sacramento, Calif., Mayor Kevin Johnson, a former NBA All-Star and chairman of U.S Conference of Mayors Education Task Force.

"Don't feed into this, that this is anti-voting. The mayor is not getting full control of the schools. He's just appointing a board. I would not be here supporting it if I thought it was a bad idea," Johnson said.

Johnson was campaigning for a charter revision question on the Nov. 6 ballot that asks voters to approve "education governance reforms," which

Read more: http://www.ctpost.com/local/article/Education-reform-leader-backs-plan-to-appoint-3969514.php#ixzz2A2ClgrSy

Letter-writing campaign shows frustration with Obama education policies – Schools of Thought - CNN.com Blogs

Letter-writing campaign shows frustration with Obama education policies – Schools of Thought - CNN.com Blogs:

Letter-writing campaign shows frustration with Obama education policies

by Donna Krache, CNN

(CNN) Earlier this month, Education Secretary Arne Duncan delivered his state of education speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., which was part self-review of his department’s goals and achievements and part campaign speech for his boss, President Obama.

But not all educators are ardent supporters of the president’s policies, and they are letting him know.

At about the same time Duncan was giving his speech, education historian and professor Diane Ravitch issued a call to teachers, administrators, parents and students to send letters to the president, expressing their sincere views on his education policies.

In her own draft of a letter to President Obama, Ravitch says, “Please, Mr. President, stop talking about rewarding and punishing teachers. Teachers are professionals, not toddlers.”  She also asks the president to “stop encouraging the privatization of education” and to “speak out against the spread of for-profit 

LISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH 10-22-12 Diane Ravitch's blog

Diane Ravitch's blog:

Just Another Nonsensical Policy in Florida

by dianerav

A reader responded to an earlier post about Florida’s decision to set different academic goals for children of different races:
“As a Florida teacher since 1997, I have watched our state board enact bone-headed policies that make no sense, but of all of them, the race-based variable learning goals has to be most useless and inane, not to mention anti-education and unworkable. There are so many questions about the way these standards will be applied I wonder how they expect school districts to carry them out. If a child is mixed race, are they allowed to 

CNN.COM Reports on the Campaign for Our Public Schools

by dianerav

CNN.COM just posted a description of the letter-writing Campaign for Our Public Schools.
This is extremely helpful as it educates the public about what teachers and parents and students know and believe.
In our efforts to promote a sane public policy about education and to stop the demonization of teachers and public schools, we need to educate the public about what is happening in the schools, the good and the bad.

In Pennsylvania, A Significant Victory for Public Education

by dianerav

Pennsylvania legislators were moving to adopt a “charter reform” bill that would have benefited charters mightily.
In response to the loud outcry from supporters of public education, some Republican legislators switched sides at the last minute and the bill died.
There are indeed serious injustices that need to be corrected–like the outrageous over-funding of cyber charters–

EduShyster Is Looking for Los Estudiantes

by dianerav

EduShyster should just take over my blog.
I could reprint everything he/she posts.
He or she is much funnier than I am.
And he or she (is there another pronoun?) finds more and more ingenious ways to unravel closely held secrets.
Take a look at this one.
Where are los ninos y ninas?

Vermillion Parish School Board Joins the Honor Roll

by dianerav

Vermillion Parish School Board in Louisiana joins the Honor Roll as a hero of public education because of its refusal to bow down to the unjust, unwise demands of the State Department of Education. The Louisiana State Department of Education is not at all “conservative.” It believes that bureaucracy should override local control and that the people should hand their local schools over to the whims of the state.
The Louisiana Department of Education chastised four school districts for refusing to obey the Legislature’s 

Some Questions for the Debate Tonight

by dianerav

Jere Hochman, the superintendent in Bedford, New York, previously acknowledged as a hero of public education on this blog, offers some thoughtful questions for the Presidential debate tonight. Since the topic is foreign affairs, none of these questions is likely to be asked, but surely journalists who encounter the candidates and their surrogates in the days ahead could ask these questions.

Who Opposes Initiative 1240 in Washington State? Who Supports It?

by dianerav

Voters in Washington State have turned down charter proposals three times. Now the idea is up for a vote again on November 6.
The advocates have raised millions of dollars from a handful of supporters, none of whom are public school parents.
The opponents have raised about $200,000 from a broad array of individuals.
Who opposes the charter initiative 1240 in Washington State

• ORGANIZATIONS AND INDIVIDUALS AGAINST CHARTER SCHOOL INITIATIVE 1240-JOIN THE RANKS!

  • Washington State PTA
  • League of Women Voters
  * State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Randy Dorn
  • WASA – Washington Association of School Administrators
  • WSSDA – Washington State School Directors Association Board
  • Washington Education Association
  * Renton School Board
  * Seattle Public School Board
  * Eatonville School Board
  * Evergreen School Board
  * Franklin Pierce School Board
  * Goldendale School Board
  * Moses Lake School Board
  * Onion Creek School Board
  • Educational Service District 113
  * Riverview School Board, serving Carnation, Duvall and parts of unincorporated East King County.
  * Renton School District
  * Superintendent of Seattle Public Schools, Jose Banda
  • Japanese-American Citizens League Board
  • Seattle-King County NAACP
  • El Centro de la Raza
  • Parents and Friends for Tacoma Public Schools
  • Parents Across America – Seattle chapter
  * Parents Across America- Tri-Cities chapter
  * Parents Across America-Tacoma chapter
  * Parents Across America- Spokane chapter
  * Senator Adam Kline
  • 1st District Democrats
  • 5th District Democrats
  * 10th District Democrats
  • 11th District Democrats
  * 21st District Democrats
  • 22nd District Democrats
  * 23rd District Democrats
  * 27th District Democrats
  • 32nd District Democrats
  • 33rd District Democrats
  • 34th District Democrats
  • 36th District Democrats
  • 37th District Democrats
  * 39th District Democrats
  * 40th District Democrats
  • 41st District Democrats
  • 43rd District Democrats
  • 45th District Democrats
  • 46th District Democrats
  • 48th District Democrats
  • King County Democrats
  * Lewis Country Democrats
  * Mason County Democrats
  • Pierce County Democrats
  * Skagit County Democrats
  * Whatcom County Democrats
  • Metropolitan Democratic Club of Seattle
  * Kristine Lytton State Rep.40th District
  • Citizens United for Responsible Education
  • IUOE Local 609 (Operating Engineers)
  • Association of Washington School Principals
  • Northwest Progressive Institute
  • UW Alumni Assn. Multicultural Alumni Partnership Board
  * The Seattle Stranger
  • Wayne Au, PhD in education, parent, and editor of Rethinking Schools
  • James Bible, President, Seattle-King County chapter of NAACP
  • Scott Heinze (Tacoma School Board Director)
  • Charlie Mas, Seattle Schools Community Forum blog
  • Barbara de Michele,former School Board member, Issaquah School District
  • Sue Peters, Seattle Education blog
  • John Stokes, Bellevue City Council member
  • Melissa Westbrook, Seattle Schools Community Forum Blog
  ****************************
• Who supports initiative 1240?
  Bill Gates
  The Bezos family (Amazon.com)
  Paul Allen (Microsoft)
  Alice Walton (Arkansas, Walmart)
  and a few other assorted millionaires and billionaires

EduShyster’s Sister Offers Advice to President Obama

by dianerav

Little did Anthony Cody and I know that the sister of Edushyster had a letter in the collection that we forwarded to the President this week.
EduShyster is the acerbic, hilarious blogger in Massachusetts who sees through all the baloney that we read day after day about “reform.”
One detail emerged in this post. EduShyster refers to herself. So, unless he is pulling a fast one with a fake pronoun, we have narrowed the possibilities in the Bay State by half.

Where Parent Revolution Lost Me :: Frederick M. Hess

Where Parent Revolution Lost Me :: Frederick M. Hess:

Where Parent Revolution Lost Me

by Frederick M. Hess  •  Oct 22, 2012 at 6:23 am
Cross-posted from Education Week

Hidy all, I'm back. Want to thank Heather, Bill, and Sarah for some terrific posts. We're about to head into heavy pre-election mode, but there was one particular development while I was gone that I feel compelled to address.

I've been skeptical but sympathetic on the parent trigger. But the parent trigger crowd pretty much lost me when Parent Revolution's National Communications Director David Phelps sent out a craven e-mail blast that needlessly attacked for-profit charter providers in a cheap effort to score political points. Phelps wrote, "Those who oppose Parent Trigger laws [argue] that passing and implementing a Parent Trigger law does nothing more than open the door to allow for-profit operators to privatize failing public schools. Nothing is further from the truth. Parent Revolution opposes any attempt by for-profit charter school operators to "takeover" public schools[emphasis in original]."

Phelps pointed to a Detroit Free Press op-ed by my friend Ben Austin, executive director of California-based Parent Revolution, in which Austin charged, "We have always stood for a simple and fundamental proposition: Parents must have power over the education of their own children. Profit has no place in that education... 

College Board: Rise in students in AP classes accompanied by rise in performance | Get Schooled

College Board: Rise in students in AP classes accompanied by rise in performance | Get Schooled:

College Board: Rise in students in AP classes accompanied by rise in performance

by Maureen Downey

Earlier this month, I linked to a controversial essay in the Atlantic by a former college professor and high school teacher criticizing Advanced Placement courses.
I introduced the issue by noting that there’s a push under way in Georgia to get more high schools students into AP classes. There is also a debate over whether students fare better taking AP classes at their high schools or taking intro classes at local colleges through dual enrollment
Among the 126 respondents to the entry was Trevor Packer, senior vice president, Advanced Placement and SpringBoard Programs, the College Board.
Because Packer’s comments came late in our discussion, I am pulling them out here for those of you who might have missed them:
By Trevor Packer

The Advanced Placement

How Teach For America became powerful:

How Teach For America became powerful

Posted by Valerie Strauss on October 22, 2012 at 4:00 am

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Teach For America is a big part of the school reform world yet many people don’t understand how it came to become the “next big thing” in U.S. education. Here is an excerpt from a book called “Excellence For All: How a New Breed of Reformers Is Transforming America’s Public Schools,” by Jack Schneider. This part of the book explains the context in which TFA was created and how it became the darling of school reformers. This is long but well worth the read, as is the entire book.

Excerpt from Jack Schneider’s “Excellence For All:”

Getting the right teachers in the classroom has been a major part of the school reform agenda for as long as 

How Lynn University snagged the presidential debate

by Valerie Strauss

How does a small, unknown private university introduce its brand to 65 million people at the same time? If it isLynn University in Florida, it snags the last presidential debate in the 2012 election campaign, and spends a year getting ready for its big moment.
Read full article >>

Daily Kos: The Campaign for our Public Schools

Daily Kos: The Campaign for our Public Schools:

The Campaign for our Public Schools

by rss@dailykos.com (teacherken)

consists of 378 Letters to President Obama From educators, parents, students and citizens.  It was organized and promoted by Diane Ravitch with the assistance of Anthony Cody (who coordinated the Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action in 2011, having previously organized a national Teachers Letters to President Obama effort).
It begins with a letter by Ravitch, from which I quote the following:

Public school educators are demoralized these days. Many worked very hard to elect Barack
Obama in 2008, believing that he meant to scrap No Child Left Behind and chart a new course. It was thus very disappointing when the Obama administration announced its Race to the Top plan, which is closely aligned with the punitive strategy of NCLB.As Race to the Top was rolled out, educators realized that the philosophy of the program was rooted in the belief that test scores are the ultimate measure of education and that state and 

Louisiana Educator: Can VAM be Fixed?

Louisiana Educator: Can VAM be Fixed?:

Can VAM be Fixed?

by Michael Deshotels

Superintendent John White believes he has a solution to the problem of teachers in top rated schools receiving an “ineffective” because of the VAM portion of the new teacher evaluation system. It was discovered recently that some high performing students in exclusive magnet schools sometimes experience a lull or slowdown in their academic gains caused by factors outside the control of the teacher. Even though such students are normally high performers, in some cases a classroom of high performers may perform below its VAM predicted scoreson state tests, thereby placing their teacher in the bottom 10% on the VAM ranking statewide. When simulations showed that several teachers at the top rated elementary school in the state may be classified as ineffective by VAM, the whole community and their state representativewere up in arms. When this story broke 

FUSE’s silence on Initiative 1240 is deafening | Seattle Education

FUSE’s silence on Initiative 1240 is deafening | Seattle Education:

FUSE’s silence on Initiative 1240 is deafening

by seattleducation2011

FUSE, an organization that describes itself as “the state’s largest progressive organization – people creating change online, on the ground, and on issues that matter”, has gone silent on Initiative 1240.
According to their website:

“Fuse is bringing Washington residents together to support progressive causes and leaders.
We envision a world where people power our government and the common good drives our public policy.
Our mission is to build a bigger and stronger progressive movement, increase leadership and accountability in politics, and improve peoples’ lives. Combining the power of the Internet with real world action and stronger communications, we bring people and groups together to drive progress 

Where are Obama and Romney on the Dropout Crisis and School Funding? | Education on GOOD

Where are Obama and Romney on the Dropout Crisis and School Funding? | Education on GOOD:

Where are Obama and Romney on the Dropout Crisis and School Funding?

When it comes to education, neither President Obama's nor Governor Romney's campaign has started a real dialogue about the failure of America's K-12 schools—or the grassroots initiatives working to combat the crisis. However, a recent panel at the University of Southern California, "No Policy Left Behind? K-12 Education in the 2012 Campaign," tackled two of the biggest issues the candidates should be addressing: the dropout crisis and school funding.

The panelists—which included academics, charter school operators, and artists—noted that the campaigns haven't offered solutions for the root causes that lead to dropout factories—schools where students receive a poor education and, as a result, drop out early.

According to one panelist, filmmaker and social media consultant Jason Pollock, the social ills 

Signs of hope on the road to doom | Jerry Large | The Seattle Times

Signs of hope on the road to doom | Jerry Large | The Seattle Times:

Signs of hope on the road to doom

Policy-driven by data and results could overcome the usual politics.

Jerry Large

Seattle Times staff columnist

A lot of problems that seem unending do have solutions. You may not hear about them in a political debate, but they exist.

Washington state is brimming with ideas that could make the future better than the present.

No, I'm not on happy drugs. If anything, I'm probably more likely than you to think we're speeding down the highway toward doom. Living immersed in the news can nurture that feeling.

But I see a lot of reminders of people building alternate routes. And they are more than isolated cases of good sense put to work; they are part of a growing reliance on evidence-based and research-based approaches to a whole range of issues from education to crime, from health care to 

NO ON 1240 (CLICK ON PICTURE)

 

Friends Don't Let Friends Get Fooled No On 1240 - No On 1240 is a grassroots group of volunteer parents and citizen education advocates from Seattle and Tacoma who are united to defeat I-1240. We stand in alliance with The People for Our Public Schools.

Diane in the Evening 10-21-12 Diane Ravitch's blog

Diane Ravitch's blog:

Thomas Friedman Needs Your Help

by dianerav

I am assuming Thomas Friedman knows a lot about foreign affairs, which is what he mostly writes about. He certainly knows very little about America’s public schools. I wonder when was the last time he stepped into a school or talked to a real teacher. My guess: it has been many years. Maybe he went to a public school.
His article in Sunday’s New York Times demonstrates that he is not only out of touch, but woefully misinformed. Everything he knows about Race to the Top he learned not by any research or school visits or investigative reporting, but by talking to Arne Duncan.
Guess what? Arne Duncan thinks Race to the Top is a huge success. He says so. It must be so. It will make the entire population college-ready. Everyone will go to college, get a good job, poverty will end, and we will 

NYC Public School Parents: Parents, do you know where your child's data is? My interesting but not reassuring afternoon with the Gates Foundation's Shared Learning Collaborative

NYC Public School Parents: Parents, do you know where your child's data is? My interesting but not reassuring afternoon with the Gates Foundation's Shared Learning Collaborative:

Parents, do you know where your child's data is? My interesting but not reassuring afternoon with the Gates Foundation's Shared Learning Collaborative

by Leonie Haimson

Yesterday, I spent several hours at the Shared Learning Collaborative “camp” held in midtown, where the Gates Foundation people invited teachers and  developers to brainstorm new “learning apps” to take advantage of all the confidential student data that they will be “holding” in their “data bank”.  (See our press conference, media coverage, and videos, during which we released a letter to the State Attorney General and the Regents, protesting the unprecedented agreement of NYC and NY State to provide confidential teacher and student data to this data bank without parental consent.  Four other districts and states, including Illinois, Massachusetts, and Colorado are also participating in this project, and Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky and Louisiana have agreed to follow soon.) 
  
The Gates Foundation identifies their role as “facilitating” the transfer of this data to commercial developers so they can invent learning products aligned with the Common Core; to aid in encouraging “efficiency” in “addressing the individual learning needs of students.”

I walked in late to the morning session, and after asking a question about the risks to student privacy, they seemed to identify me as a person of interest.  I’m not sure if the