A Small Request for My Friends at Gates :: Frederick M. Hess

A Small Request for My Friends at Gates :: Frederick M. Hess:

A Small Request for My Friends at Gates

by Frederick M. Hess  •  Mar 7, 2014 at 8:32 am
Cross-posted from Education Week

Print

Send

RSS

Share

At an Al Shanker Institute forum a few weeks back, at the AFT's DC headquarters, I aggressively defended the good intentions and fair-mindedness of foundation staff working on education (you can see the eventhere). I offered my own criticisms, but I mostly told an audience very skeptical of Gates/Walton/Broad/et al. that the people I know at these foundations are smart, well-intentioned, and entirely willing to hear and benefit from criticism, so long as it's offered up constructively and in a spirit of mutual respect. The problem, I said, was how rarely skeptics reached out in that spirit.

Indeed, I said that if critics did so and hit a wall, I'd be willing to see if I could help. Well, John Thompson, blogger and award-winning teacher, wrote to say he has a few suggestions for the Measures of Effective Teaching team at the Gates Foundation but doesn't know how to connect with them. I've known Thompson for a while now and, throughout our various disagreements, I've found him smart and thoughtful. He asked if I'd share his ideas. Because I thought the whole exercise a healthy one, I thought I'd do it this way.

Thompson, in his words, "respectfully proposes" that Gates consider the following, when it comes to determining whether good teaching looks the same in high- and low-poverty schools. He writes:

1. "[Gates] should follow their standard procedure and observation rubric in high-challenge classrooms. That will be the control. They'd then follow the same procedures with other evaluators, but only after briefing those evaluators on the students' disciplinary and criminal justice records, IEP and ELL status, and the school's policies on enforcing its code of conduct. The question is how much that would change observation outcomes.

2. Run the value-added of schools, controlled by the hour of the day. Then, compare the value-added of the same teachers, with the same students, and compare them by hour. Do they achieve the same value-added first hour and after lunch, as during the middle of the morning? 

 I'm Looking for a Little Help Out There

Hey, folks, so I've got an interesting opportunity to announce as we leave this snow behind and head into the spring season. I just had an unexpected opening emerge, creating a rare and potentially very cool opportunity for a new research assistant to...

1h 

"Slavery’s story is America’s story."

"Slavery’s story is America’s story.":

"Slavery’s story is America’s story."

byteacherkenFollow

 
 
• Email
 
• 6 Comments / 6 New

That is the final line of Eugene Robinson's powerful Washington Post column, THe American Story of Slavery.

I will offer blockquotes without hotlinks because you should read the entire column.

Robinson begins by noting

Hollywood has finally taken an unflinching look at slavery. It’s past time for the rest of the country to do the same.

   He goes on to write

We tell ourselves that we know all about slavery, that it’s ancient history. But we’ve never fully investigated its horrors, which means we’ve never come to terms with them, which means we’ve never been able to get beyond them. Where slavery is concerned, we are imprisoned by William Faulkner’s famous epigram: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

It is not just that slavery feeds into America's continuing problems with racism.

It is that one can argue that slavery itself is not dead in the United States.  After all, the 13th Amendment banning slavery does contain the exception "except for punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted" which too many Americans forget, about which I will offer a few more thoughts.

But it is also important that our understanding of our history is incomplete, if you will, whitewashed.

There are three paragraphs that are for me key to understanding how incomplete that 

A Great Divide: The Election Fight for California's Schools | California Progress Report

A Great Divide: The Election Fight for California's Schools | California Progress Report:

A Great Divide: The Election Fight for California's Schools

Posted on 07 March 2014

Printer-friendly versionSend by email

By Gary Cohn

An election campaign now being fought almost completely out of public view could radically alter the way California’s school children are taught. If Marshall Tuck unseats incumbent Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson, the state’s public education system could become a laboratory for a movement that prizes privatization and places a high value on student test scores over traditional instruction. The contrasts between the two top contenders in the nonpartisan race could not be more dramatic – nor could the stakes for the country’s largest education system.

The 40-year-old Tuck is a Harvard Business School graduate who has worked as an investment banker for Salomon Brothers and as an executive at Model N, a revenue-management software company. He is a former president of Green Dot Public Schools, a charter school operation in Los Angeles, and later served as the first head of the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools — former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s controversial education nonprofit that tried to improve 17 low-performing public schools, with mixed results.

Tuck’s candidacy is supported by the same mix of wealthy education privatizers, Silicon Valley and entertainment money, hedge fund and real estate interests that backed 

Mounting Evidence Supports Public Schools, Says Privatization and Charters No Better | janresseger

Mounting Evidence Supports Public Schools, Says Privatization and Charters No Better | janresseger:

Mounting Evidence Supports Public Schools, Says Privatization and Charters No Better

Posted on March 7, 2014 by janresseger

I have always imagined that once the evidence comes in about the performance of charter schools and virtual, on-line academies—once we learn that school achievement in charters isn’t all that different from what we see in traditional public schools—once we realize how our tax dollars are being turned into private profits and sometimes stolen—we’ll experience a mass rude awakening and begin appreciating the value of the public school system that provides services for all children at the public expense.

These days the evidence is piling up, but we don’t seem to be able to put it together into any kind of organized scheme that lets us see the whole picture.  Books like Diane Ravitch’s Reign of Error and the new book coming from David Berliner and Gene Glass, 50 Myths and Lies that Threaten America’s Public Schools, are designed to do that, but reading these detailed critiques involves a significant commitment of time.

I do urge you to carve out the time to read both of these books, but in the meantime, check out this short piece published on AlterNet in mid-February: Paul Buchheit’s The 4 Most 

New teachers scarce after state funding cuts - Education - The Sacramento Bee

New teachers scarce after state funding cuts - Education - The Sacramento Bee:

New teachers scarce after state funding cuts

By Diana Lambert and Phillip Reese
dlambert@sacbee.com

Published: Friday, Mar. 7, 2014 - 12:00 am

Young teachers have become far more scarce in California classrooms after school districts slashed their budgets to survive the recession.

From 2008 to 2013, California saw a 40 percent drop in teachers with less than six years’ experience, according to a Sacramento Bee review of state data.

As the state cut funding, districts laid off teachers with the least seniority and stopped hiring new applicants. Those employment practices, in turn, discouraged college students from pursuing the profession in California, as enrollment in teaching programs fell by 41 percent between 2008 and 2012.

Students are learning from more experienced teachers, but the hiring changes have disrupted the natural flow of classroom talent that districts typically rely upon. First-time teachers bring “freshness and energy” and ensure schools have a steady pipeline ready to replace veteran instructors who retire, said Jon Snyder, executive director of the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education.

The traditional balance may take years to restore as schools slowly rebuild their teaching ranks and college students begin to see education as a viable profession again.

With the state budget on the mend, districts hired about 13,000 K-12 teachers statewide and about 200 in the Sacramento region this school year. Next year, the number of new teachers is expected

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/03/07/6216464/new-teachers-scarce-after-state.html#mi_rss=Education#storylink=cpy

Special Late Nite Cap UPDATE 3-6-14 #BATsACT #RealEdTalk #EDCHAT #P2

Nite Cap UPDATE

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE

CORPORATE ED REFORM

News Analysis: Then and Now, a Test That Aims to Neutralize Advantages of the Privileged

The people who first designed the SAT decades ago wanted to identify a new elite based on brains rather than heredity, not necessarily to expand access to college.    

7 by By RICHARD PÉREZ-... / 3min hide  //  save

Contributing Op-Ed Writer: Save Us From the SAT

The SAT is a mind-numbing, stress-inducing ritual of torture.    

by By JENNIFER FINNE... / 3min 

The Story Behind the SAT Overhaul

How the College Board revolutionized the most controversial exam in America.    

6K by By TODD BALF / 3min

 

Oregon immigrants, allies head to California border supporting undocumented group attempting to cross

The border crossing effort is part of the Bring Them Home project led by the National Immigrant Youth Alliance to unite families separated by deportation.

8 by Andrea Castillo |... / 2h 

Principals hear contract pitch that includes major salary reductions

by Kevin McCorry for NewsWorks In the Philadelphia School District, Friday might be an especially bad day to be called to the principal's office. Thursday night, the union representing District principals and other school administrators heard the details of a tentative deal struck between union leadership and the District. If accepted, the deal would cut salaries by as much as 17 percent in additi

by thenotebook / 31min 

The Common Core© Denial of Little Evan Stone

Little Evan Stone from Educators 4 Excellence has a new mouth piece. He is Josh Goodman of the SKDKnickerbocker. Josh wrote a press release with the usual E4E propaganda deriding the New York State legislature from putting the brakes on the Common Core©.communications firm,    CommonCoreE4ESo much wrong with this statement The Crack Team was roiling on the floor laughing that EMS came and carted t

by noreply@blogger.c... / 1h 

The "Fight" of the Century that Wasn't: What the Promoters Might Have to Do to Pull it Off!

Listening to the NPE Conference  this past weekend I was reminded that a 75-year old Grandma who "kicks butt" (apparently wearing Tony Lama boots for a second time) can make the likes of Michelle Rhee seemingly quake in her boots.  The Ravitch-Rhee debate was scheduled for February 6, 2014 at Lehigh University. Hopes ran high!  To me, it seemed on the scale of the Frazier-Ali fights that

by Adam Bergstein / 1h

Vergara witness says state laws governing teachers work

Cal-Berkeley professor Jesse Rothstein The battle of the experts continued today in Vergara vs. California as an expert in labor economics and public policy called by the defense provided rationales for keeping in place the state laws governing teachers that are under challenge in the case. Jesse Rothstein, a professor at Cal-Berkeley and a former senior economist on the U.S. Council of Economic A

3 by Mark Harris / 2h 

Video: Bringing Syria’s Civil War Home

I’m adding this video to The Best Resources For Learning About What’s Happening In Syria:

by Larry Ferlazzo / 28min hide  //  save

Excellent Updated Resources On Ukraine

Here are some excellent new additions to The Best Resources On The Protests (& Crisis) In Ukraine: Ukraine embroiled in East-West divide is an Associated Press interactive. Ukrainian crisis: Situation maps is from The Washington Post. What’s Going On in Ukraine? An Up-to-Date Guide is from ABC News.

by Larry Ferlazzo / 1h 

Nite Cap 3-6-14 #BATsACT #RealEdTalk #EDCHAT #P2

James Baldwin said it best: "For these are all our children, and we will profit by or pay for whatever they become."A BIG EDUCATION APE NITE CAPSPECIAL Mid Day Banana Break 3-6-14 #RealEdTalk #edreformBig Education Ape - Mid Day Banana BreakDe Blasio, in Radio Interview, Defends His Position on Charter SchoolsBy Kate Taylor | Originally Published at The New York Times. March 6, 2014 Batt

by mike simpson / 4h hide  //  save

SPECIAL Mid Day Banana Break 3-6-14 #RealEdTalk #edreform

Big Education Ape - Mid Day Banana BreakDe Blasio, in Radio Interview, Defends His Position on Charter SchoolsBy Kate Taylor | Originally Published at The New York Times. March 6, 2014 Battered in the press over his position on charter schools, Mayor Bill de Blasio on Thursday took to a friendly news outlet to defend himself and argue that his actions were being distorted. […]by empathy / 58minRat

by mike simpson / 5h 

Community Forum on the CORE Waiver | The Sacramento Coalition to Save Public Education

Community Forum on the CORE Waiver | The Sacramento Coalition to Save Public Education: Community Forum on the CORE WaiverPlease join the Sacramento City Teachers Association, Hmong Innovating Politics, the Black Parallel School Board and the Sacramento Coalition to Save Public Education atthe Sierra II Community Center's Curtis Hall (24th St. and 4th Ave.)for a forum on the California Office to R

by mike simpson / 5h