How KIPP Schools Define Success - Bridging Differences - Education Week

How KIPP Schools Define Success - Bridging Differences - Education Week:

How KIPP Schools Define Success

by Deborah Meier

Today, Elliott Witney, formerly a leader in a KIPP charter school, begins blogging with Deborah Meier.
Dear Deb,

I feel incredibly grateful to be able to join you in this public discussion. I remember vividly the moments when Emily Gasoi reflected aloud how surprised she was to find such similarity between the schools you work with and the KIPP school she studied for her dissertation.
Before I respond in detail to your post, I wanted to clarify that I no longer work full-time for KIPP. I currently serve as an administrator for the Spring Branch Independent School District in Houston. Before coming to Spring Branch, I worked for KIPP starting in 1999—first as a teacher at the original middle school in Houston, and then later as the principal. I was also the girls' soccer coach for middle and high school for about a dozen years, a job I loved. I continue to teach a course on leadership to aspiring KIPP leaders, which takes me across the country to see an array of KIPP schools in action.
What's been particularly interesting in my transition from charter to traditional is how similar (I'd go so far as to 

UPDATE: Daily Kos: Schools Worth Cloning in the Public Sector

Daily Kos: Schools Worth Cloning in the Public Sector:

In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.

by rss@dailykos.com (teacherken)

who 45 years ago this evening was assassinated on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.
The greatest honor I can give him is to offer you this:  the speech he gave exactly one year before his death, in Riverside Church in New York City.
Perhaps you can listen to his actual speech:

Popout
Perhaps you do not have time now to listen for the almost full hour.  At some time you should - it is far more powerful to hear him speak, but there is also an alternative . . .
where you will encounter directly words like these, words that always speak to me with power:

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.

Would that we had learned that lesson.Please keep reading.

Schools Worth Cloning in the Public Sector

by rss@dailykos.com (teacherken)

This morning I am posting something that may be of interest, written by someone else.
Yesterday I posted something written by Bill Ayers, which he had sent me as a result of reading this post on a column by Eugene Robinson the day before.  After reading my post on Ayers, a teacher from Chicago named Paul Horton reached out to Bill and asked if he would forward to me something he had written.  What is below the fold is that piece.
To put into context who Paul Horton is, he teaches at the Laboratory Schools of the University of Chicago.  It is the alma mater of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.  It was where the Obama girls attended school before he was elected President.  Among the current Chicago notables whose children are or have attended the Lab School are Penny Pritzker, who was a major fundraiser for the President, serves as head of the Chicago Board of Education, and is rumored to be the next Secretary of Commerce, and former Congressman and White House 

LISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH 4-4-13 Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all:

TeacherKen: on the Standardized Testing Racket

by dianerav

The Atlanta cheating scandal has caused some reflection on the system that incentivizes unethical behavior.
It is important to say again and again that cheating is wrong. Those who cheat should be punished.
But who will correct the system that cheats children of education?
This reflection by TeacherKen on a column by Eugene Robinson raises important questions about the misdirection of education by the unrelenting demand for ever higher scores.

Newspeak and Education Reform: What Would Orwell Say?

by dianerav

A reader sent these late-night reflections to me:
“I drifted off to sleep last night, the phrase “No Child Left Behind” kept ringing in my ears. It sounds so noble… No – Child – Left – Behind – surely that is good for our country. Yet, at the same time my eyes were closing, the disturbing aparthied maps that Jersey Jazzman posted were flashing before my eyes.
In the corners of my mind, memories of 1984, by George Orwell churn. Newspeak (the removal of negative terms from language) reappears today. “Newspeak is engineered to remove even the possibility of rebellious thoughts—the words by which such thoughts might be articulated have been eliminated from the language.”
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/1984/section11.rhtml
Samples: Newspeak Reform Dictionary and Guide to Phraseology:

Tennessee: We Starve Families if Test Scores Don’t Rise

by dianerav

The Tennessee legislation to cut welfare benefits for families if kids don’t raise their test scores was passed by the committee and now goes to the House Government Operations Committee. It is scheduled for a vote in the State Senate on April 4.
If adopted, Tennessee will let the starving begin.
Will President Obama denounce this dreadful legislation? Will Secretary Duncan? Will DFER? Will Bill Gates?
Where are the reformers who put students first?

Why the Tennessee Law to Punish Poor Families is Wrong

by dianerav

LG, a longtime reader, wrote a letter to Senator Stacey Campfield (R) in Tennessee, who sponsored the legislation to cut the welfare benefits of poor families by as much as 30% if their children don’t raise their test scores. The legislation is inherently discriminatory, she writes, because it singles out poor families for punishment.
This raises interesting questions. How about increasing taxes on wealthy families whose children don’t raise their test scores? Senator Campfield would get way more letters from them! And people would begin asking who made the tests so important. And whether they should be used to mete out punishments and rewards. That would be a boon for the anti-testing movement.
LG writes:
Dear Senator Campfield,
Thank you for your reply.
This is a radical solution for a very important issue. How can anyone reconcile this same targeting strategy for 

A Parent Writes the New York State Education Department

by dianerav

Just received this:
“Dear Department of Education,
You should be proud of your Administrators and your principals. They are acting in full support of your harmful programs. They are choking out the words “these tests are very useful to your children”, and they “will not be able to determine the academic needs of your child” without them, while giving up countless hours of sleep for acting against their conscience. They sign their names to memos that state little white lies, perversions of the truth, and sometimes flat out falsities, while their stomachs turn and their palms sweat. They are even changing 

Did Bill Gates Just Reverse Course?

by dianerav

I read this article “by Bill Gates” with a growing sense of incredulity.
I kept hearing echoes of many things I and others have written since Gates decided to make teacher evaluation the biggest crisis in American education. In 2008, he dropped the small schools movement and determined that teachers are our biggest problem. If we had a better way to evaluate them, schools could fire the bad ones and have only good ones.
No one did more to push the idea that teachers should be judged by the test scores of their students. No one 

Critics Question Ethics of Jeb Bush Foundation

by dianerav

Recently, the Foundation for Educational Excellence (FEE), created by Jeb Bush, has come under fire for mixing its programming with the financial interests of its backers while serving as a vehicle for Bush’s 2016 presidential ambitions.
The Tampa Tribune ran a scathing article that pointed out problematic practices:
“Lobbyists are not allowed to finance perks like trips for state officials, but those at the Foundation for Excellence in Education get around that ban by being registered to another foundation run by Jeb Bush.

Former Gov. Jeb Bush’s nonprofit, education reform foundation is taking heat for using donations from for-profit 

Drucker Vs. Deming: Who Is Right?

by dianerav

Ed Johnson writes:
“Noted business consultant Peter Drucker famously said, ‘That which can be measured, can be managed.’”
And W. Edwards Deming, Drucker’s contemporary, said: “The most important figures needed for management of any organization are unknown and unknowable.”

A Subtle Smear on a Public School Advocate

by dianerav

Gotham Schools ran a story that questioned why the city’s leading advocate for public schools had enrolled her son in a private high school after many years as a public school parent. The story subtly implied that she may have lost her right to advocate for public schools because she was no longer a parent of a public school student.
Leonie Haimson founded Class Size Matters and is a co-founder of Parents Across America. She is a fearless critic of high-stakes testing and of the Bloomberg administration. She has been the most articulate and persistent supporter of class size reduction. She currently is waging war against the titans who are invading 

John White and the Rise of the TFA Elite

by dianerav

Mercedes Schneider here recounts how Teach for Alumni manage to rise to six-figure salaries at a tender age, and her paradigmatic TFA graduate is John White.
White, now the Commissioner of Education in Louisiana, arrived to do Bobby Jindal’s handiwork, that is, demolishing public education and dismantling the teaching profession.
Quite a task for a young man, but he is up to it.

California Father | @califather Califather all spiffed up and ready to stream Occupy the DoE! #edchat #soschat #uoodc13

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 4 hours ago

California Father | Educating Sullivan: [image: California Father] califather on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free - ON DEMAND - ABOUT OCCUPY THE DEPT OF ED - HOW TO CHAT

Diane in the Evening 4-3-13 Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 3 hours ago

Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all: “Why I Fight, Why You Should Too” by dianerav Crazy Crawfish is one of those amazing Louisiana bloggers who refuses to be bought, intimidated, or silenced. He used to work in the data division of the Louisiana Department of Education. He reached a point where his conscience told him he had to work somewhere else. Now he has a blog where he repeatedly shines his spotlight on the spin coming from his old department. He keeps fighting for kids, fighting for public education, fighting for honest data. Why does he... more »

Bill would protect adult ed, career tech while extending local control | EdSource Today

Bill would protect adult ed, career tech while extending local control | EdSource Today:

Bill would protect adult ed, career tech while extending local control - by John Fensterwald

by John Fensterwald

School districts would keep discretion to spend billions of dollars of “categorical” funding  however they want for five more years under a Senate bill that passed its first hurdle in the Legislature on Wednesday. 

Sen. Carol Liu

SB 223‘s provisions on local spending control are similar to Gov. Jerry Brown’s sweeping plan for school finance reform. Both approaches would require that districts show how they used the money, freed from state restrictions, to improve student achievement. But there are important differences, too, between the bill, authored by Sen. Carol Liu, D-Pasadena, who chairs the Education Committee, and the governor’s Local Control Funding Formula.

Four years ago, to try to soften the impact of severe K-12 budget cuts, the Legislature temporarily removed restrictions on 40 categorical programs getting $4.5 billion in state funding. They include money for textbooks and materials, physical education, arts and music, teacher training, education technology and deferred maintenance on buildings.

Liu’s bill, as amended, would reimpose protections on at least one of the categorical programs, adult education, and, during the committee hearing, she said she was open to reinstating spending restrictions for other programs. An EdSource survey of the 30 largest school districts revealed that several have 

Teacher dismissal bill off and running with committee approval - by John Fensterwald

by John Fensterwald

A bill intended to make it quicker and less costly to dismiss teachers received a 7-0 approval from the Assembly Education Committee on Wednesday, and its author – the chair of the committee, Joan Buchanan, D-Alamo – received much praise from her colleagues for taking on a contentious issue. Unanimous passage of AB 375, without opposition in public testimony, does not necessarily mean the bill...

Occupy the Department Of Education Returns to DC | Mother Jones

Occupy the Department Of Education Returns to DC | Mother Jones:

California Father | @califather Califather all spiffed up and ready to stream Occupy the DoE! #edchat #soschat #uoodc13

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 4 hours ago

California Father | Educating Sullivan: [image: California Father] califather on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free - ON DEMAND - ABOUT OCCUPY THE DEPT OF ED - HOW TO CHAT

Occupy the Department Of Education Returns to DC

—By Stephanie Mencimer

| Thu Apr. 4, 2013 3:20 AM PDT

Post

Protesters from Occupy DOE United OptOut

Most of the Occupy movement has petered out a year and a half after it exploded in New York’s Zuccotti Park. But one small segment of that movement is rallying in DC this week to focus attention on the evils of “corporate education reform.”

Liberal education luminaries including DianeRavitch, a former assistant education secretary, and Central Park East schools guruDeborah Meier, will be in Washington as part of a four-day “Occupy the Department of Education” event organized by United Optout, a group that came together last year in the flurry of other Occupy Wall Street events. They’ll be part of non-stop speechmaking from teachers, educators, students, and parents, decrying such things as high-stakes testing and the move towards privatizing public education.

The focus on the Department of Education is intentional. Liberal school advocates are deeply 

Student Absences Costing Sacramento City Unified School District Millions « CBS Sacramento

Student Absences Costing Sacramento City Unified School District Millions « CBS Sacramento:

Student Absences Costing Sacramento City Unified School District Millions - CBS Local

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) – Parents are letting their students stay home and it’s costing the Sacramento City Unified School District millions of dollars.

At Leataata Floyd Elementary School, nearly a quarter of the students miss at least 18 days a year, and a new report says parents are a big part of the problem.

Parents have heard every excuse in the book when their child wants to miss school, but the school district is suffering from too many excused absences called in by parents.

“It’s a cycle we are trying to put a wedge in,” school district employee Barbara Kronick said.

She led a study that looked at absences in 2011 and found 10 

An urban school district that works — without miracles or Superman:

An urban school district that works — without miracles or Superman

Posted by Valerie Strauss on April 4, 2013 at 4:00 am

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To listen to some school reformers, you’d think there are no urban traditional public schools that are successful. Here’s a different story, adapted and excerpted from “Improbable Scholars: The Rebirth of a Great American School System And A Strategy For America’s Schools” (Oxford University Press), by David Kirp, professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He is a former newspaper editor and policy consultant, as well as the author of numerous articles in various publications and several books, including “Shakespeare, Einstein and the Bottom Line: The Marketing of Higher Education.” His new book, “Improbable Scholars,” tells the story of the public schools in Union City, N.J., where teachers do an amazing job of teaching high-poverty students without employing “miracle” reforms.

By David Kirp

What would it really take to give students a first-rate education? Some argue that our schools are irremediably broken and that charter schools offer the only solution. The striking achievement of Union City, N.J. — bringing poor, mostly immigrant kids into th

Cheating Scandals Reaffirm, Not Diminish, Testing | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Cheating Scandals Reaffirm, Not Diminish, Testing | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Cheating Scandals Reaffirm, Not Diminish, Testing

by larrycuban

Not until the trials (or plea bargains) are over, will a verdict be rendered on former Superintendent Beverly Hall’s guilt or innocence in what is called the Atlanta cheating scandal. Hall’s indictment follows on the heels of finding El Paso Superintendent Lorenzo Garcia guilty last Fall. He is now serving three and a half years in jail (see hereand here).
Even before a judge or jury decides on her guilt or innocence, anti-testing groups, feeding on Atlanta, El Paso, and the investigation of tampering with test scores under Washington, D.C. school chief, Michelle Rhee, have grabbed the case to further their cause. Moreover, over the years, journalists have uncovered oddities in test scores jumping sky-high in one year in other districts across the nation.
Foes of standardized tests feel the rush of adrenalin in saying that these examples of dishonest adults raising student test scores to receive applause and cash awards are pervasive. Defenders of standardized testing and accountability, however, see the  cheating as exceptions, as a few rotten apples in a barrel full of worm-free 

Missouri Education Watchdog: Collaborating to Stagnation

Missouri Education Watchdog: Collaborating to Stagnation:

Collaborating to Stagnation

by Anngie

The new Common Core standards are supposed to develop students with "21st century skills" and "higher level" or "critical" thinking skills. (I'm still waiting for someone to tell me what a 21st century skill is that is uniquely different from the skills k-12 education taught in that last century)  It's that second part that has a lot of people and businesses popping up and nodding their heads. Who wouldn't want kids with critical thinking skills? Just watch your average teenage driver with a permit take out the family car and begin setting those 4,000 lbs hurtling down the main drag of town past stop signs, pedestrians, bicyclists and pot holes and take note of how many times you pray that child has critical thinking skills. It's a laudible goal, but what does it mean in common core.

A post on InvisibleSerfsCollar.com delves into what the industry experts at Pearson think critical thinking means. "Pearson wants open-ended tasks to assess 21st century skills in authentic real-world problem contexts. And these tasks are to be done as a group in order to assess collaboration." The goal is not to complete the task, but to "assess collaboration." Pearson goes on to note that tasks which are “obvious” or “unambiguous” would 

Natalie Meier – Lessons On Raising Your Voice Student Voice

Student Voice:

Natalie Meier – Lessons On Raising Your Voice

by admin

When I first got involved with writing for Student Voice, I don’t think I grasped just how much the concept of raising my own voice would resonate in everything else I do.
Talking about how you feel and what you believe in is difficult, especially if you’re worried that someone is going to shoot you down. I’ve received criticism for my own beliefs, and it wasn’t until I started to understand how valuable my ideals were that I began to stick by them and stop conforming to everyone else’s standards.
Your thoughts are valuable. Your thoughts, beliefs, dreams, and ideas are what is going to move society forward. Society is a chameleon with the fastest transformation time in the world; it never stops changing, and it never slows down for anyone.
But one thing that doesn’t change, that will never change, is the power of your own voice.
Today’s youth, our students, must remember that we are the voices of today, tomorrow, and every day after that. 

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: BBB'S HEARING PROBLEM

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: BBB'S HEARING PROBLEM:

BBB'S HEARING PROBLEM

by Mike Klonsky

Schools CEO Byrd-Bennett has a hearing problem. After 20,000 people turned up at neighborhood community meetings to voice their anger over proposed school closings, BBB heard it this way.

"Everybody got it that we really needed to close schools..."

Then when one parent after another got up at Tuesday's press conference voicing concerns about their children's safety, passing through dangerous neighborhoods to get to their receiving school,BBB responded by saying she no time for adults who use the"excuse of gangs to keep children trapped in failing schools."

When civil rights advocates insisted that school closing policies targeting black neighborhood schools violated