Send Your Email to Governor Fallin about Common Core | Missouri Education Watchdog

Send Your Email to Governor Fallin about Common Core | Missouri Education Watchdog:

Send Your Email to Governor Fallin about Common Core

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Restore Oklahoma Public Education (ROPE) has a request for those in other states opposed to Common Core: Contact Governor Mary Fallin for her signature on HB3399 which would eradicate Common Core from Oklahoma.  She can set the precedence for other states to exit the Initiative and regain true control of their state’s standards.  Missouri needs to be added to the list of citizens Governor Fallin hears from on Common Core!  Let’s get busy and send her our emails supporting the House and Senate in its historic vote to do away with Common Core State Standards in Oklahoma.

From ROPE:

************************************************

As we told you Saturday, HB3399 (the repeal and replacement of Common Core) passed from both the Oklahoma House and Senate by an overwhelming majority Friday the 23rd. Governor Fallin has until June 2 to sign HB3399 to sign the bill into law.  If she chooses not to act, the bill will die by pocket veto.

If you are a member of the Oklahoma GOP whether a Republican voter or an office holder, please take a moment to sign this petition/letter from our State Committeewoman Carolyn McClarty asking Governor Fallin to sign HB3399.

In just 24 hours over a holiday weekend, there are HUNDREDS of SIGNATURES on the petition, and our mailbox has HUNDREDS of letters!  So far we have letters from CA, GA, HI, ID, WA, NJ, WI, CT, PA, OH, MN, NV, WY, CO, KS, and SD!!  We can’t stop there, though.  We need THOUSANDS to make our point!  Be sure to pass this email/info on to friends/family/neighbors!

Not only that, but we’ve made national news!  Our letter writing campaign has been featured in Breitbart News and advertised on the Truth in American Education network.

Go here to find instructions and sample letters for Oklahoma residents and those from other states and get ‘er done!

As usual, thank you so much for all your efforts to fight Common Core in Oklahoma – without you we’d NEVER have made it this far!

Very Sincerely,

Jenni White

President

Restore Oklahoma Public Education

www.RestoreOkPublicEducation.com

Send Your Email to Governor Fallin about Common Core | Missouri Education Watchdog:

Obama Administration’s College Rating Proposal Threatens Core Educational Values | janresseger

Obama Administration’s College Rating Proposal Threatens Core Educational Values | janresseger:

Obama Administration’s College Rating Proposal Threatens Core Educational Values

Posted on May 27, 2014 by janresseger

As May turns to June and summer weather arrives, this blog will take a week-long break.  Back on Tuesday, June 3.

Over the weekend, the NY Times reported on Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s planned rating system for American colleges and universities.  At a time when we have seen an explosion of marginal, for-profit, often on-line institutions of higher education siphoning federal loans and grants that may never be repaid, I can understand that the federal government would seek to protect its investment, but surely our recent experiment with school accountability that ranks K-12 schools based on their students’ test scores should cause us to proceed cautiously.  There has been considerable collateral damage.

Caution is not part of the Administration’s plan, however.  Officials claim the Administration’s rating system will be in place by the end of the year: “Mr. Obama and his aides say colleges and universities that receive a total of $150 billion each year in federal loans and grants must prove they are worth it. The problem is acute, they insist: At too many schools, tuition is going up, graduation rates are going down, and students are leaving with enormous debt and little hope of high-paying jobs.”  The NY Times reports that, “Mr. Obama’s system would not rank schools numerically but would give them grades or ratings like ‘excellent,’ ‘good’ ‘fair’ or ‘poor.’”

Cecilia Muñoz, the director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, has pretty much announced this is a done deal: “For those who are making the argument that we shouldn’t do this, I think those folks could fairly have the impression that we’re not listening. There is an element to this conversation which is, ‘We hope to God you don’t do this.’ Our answer to that is: ‘This is happening.’ ”  And Arne Duncan, in his usual disdain for the status quo, commented: “We have a financial and moral obligation to be good stewards of these dollars. To defend thestatus quo, for me, you can’t do that.”

According to the recent  NY Times report and earlier coverage of plans to rate colleges, the factors will be graduation rates, price of tuition and fees, debt load students carry after they graduate, and even how much money students make after graduation, although this last data will be difficult to collect. Valuing salaries as a measure of educational quality is also Obama Administration’s College Rating Proposal Threatens Core Educational Values | janresseger:

Urban, Rural Schools Connected by Inequality - Bridging Differences - Education Week

Urban, Rural Schools Connected by Inequality - Bridging Differences - Education Week:

Urban, Rural Schools Connected by Inequality

By Guest Blogger on May 27, 2014 8:20 AM

Author and advocate Mike Klonsky again writes to Deborah Meier today. The two are currently co-blogging on Bridging Differences.

Deb,

In last week's post, you write, "we've both avoided looking at the picture as it plays out in smaller towns and rural areas."  I was considering your points on urban/rural this week, after reading Ta-Nehisi Coates' powerful and compelling piece "The Case for Reparations" in the June issue of The Atlantic. It's a narrative that can lead only to the conclusion that educational inequity is tightly bound up with the legacy of Southern slavery (America's original sin?), Jim Crow, and then Northern urban racial discrimination in education and housing.

Coates makes the case for reparations, saying: 

"An America that asks what it owes its most vulnerable citizens is improved and humane. An America that looks away is ignoring not just the sins of the past but the sins of the present and the certain sins of the future. ... More important than any single check cut to any African American, the payment of reparations would represent America's maturation out of the childhood myth of its innocence into a wisdom worthy of its founders."

I agree. This statement parallels in many respects the 2006 AERA convention speech given by education scholar Gloria Ladson-Billings. In this speech, titled "From the Achievement Gap to the Education Debt: Understanding Achievement in U.S. Schools," Ladson-Billings called for dumping the term "achievement gap," which unfairly portrays black and Latino  students as "defective and lacking," while penalizing them and their school for "low performance" on tests. She suggested the term "education debt," moving to a discourse that holds our society accountable for the public education of all our children—not just our own or the ones we're paid to teach.

There's no avoiding rural school issues. If I tend to focus more these days on the struggles in urban and suburban education, it's because that's where I live, teach, and do my research.

But urbanites are not the only ones pushing back against the corporate "reformers." We can't Urban, Rural Schools Connected by Inequality - Bridging Differences - Education Week:

What Parents Should Know About School Bonds And Our LAUSD Citizens’ Oversight Committee: – redqueeninla

What Parents Should Know About School Bonds And Our LAUSD Citizens’ Oversight Committee: – redqueeninla:



What Parents Should Know About School Bonds And Our LAUSD Citizens’ Oversight Committee:

Written by redqueeninla in Education, LAUSD

There is a political brouhaha going on right now that really deserves your attention. Your attention as a parent, as a taxpayer, as a citizen.

It involves a pretty obscure committee known as the “Citizens’ Bond Oversight Committee” (BOC: www.laschools.org/bond) – I know, I’d never heard of it until recently either.  [NB:  The BOC website has been offline for several days; an archived version is available in the first hyperlink].

Turns out all that money we as tax payers empower agencies to borrow as “bonds” for a specific purpose or project – a whole endeavor with terms I don’t understand well – that money needs “watchdogging” because just mandating it happen doesn’t say how it will happen, or by whom, etc. Such appropriations become a situation ripe for abuse, to which alert minds have been thinking about and attending the danger for a good long while.

For example there is a whole League of Bond Oversight Committees. This tactic of funding specific projects is common enough and involves large enough sums of money, overseen by rank enough novices that all across the state Oversight Committees have been formed to watch the process and these themselves end up needing instruction. Check it out: http://www.calboc.org/ .

And right now we have a Citizens’ Bond Oversight Committee in LA that is under attack. It is supposed to be an independent task force with appointees from various interest groups charged with scrutinizing the distribution of funds mandated by the taxpayers specifically for the purpose of funding school construction and infrastructure. Our Board of Education ensures that the appointees to this committee made by various special interest groups are fit to serve (as in not, say, felons or pedophiles), but they are not to influence the What Parents Should Know About School Bonds And Our LAUSD Citizens’ Oversight Committee: – redqueeninla:

Now you have the NCLB waiver, now you don’t :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet

Now you have the NCLB waiver, now you don’t :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:

Now you have the NCLB waiver, now you don’t

by Kimberly Beltran

(Wash.) K-12 schools here are adjusting their budgets to deal with the $40 million impact of having their federal No Child Left Behind waiver revoked.

But any staffing or programs lost to the impending shift are likely to be offset by increased revenues from the improving state economy as well as additional school funding ordered under a 2012 court ruling.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the state’s top education official vowed that work will continue toward meeting all waiver requirements in hopes of having it reinstated in 2015.

“The (U.S.) Department of Education has said, ‘you know, we have not extended your waiver for the ‘14-‘15 school year but if state law does change they you can reapply,” said Nathan Olson, spokesman for state Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn.

The issue, not unique to Washington, is that the waivers require teacher evaluation systems based in part on student test scores.

Forty-three states, plus Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and a group of eight California school districts have received waivers – issued by the Obama Administration starting in 2011 to provide relief from some of the more onerous requirements of the top education law in the land.

The president also created his $4.3 billion Race to the Top fund to encourage states to implement new teacher evaluation systems and other changes.

Only one state – Ohio – appears to have adopted all elements of the program’s teacher evaluation requirements, according to an analysis released earlier this month by the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences. (See Cabinet Report, May 2)

Other waiver holders have struggled to reach agreement with their teachers, who balk at having their performance – and under some proposals, their pay and job status – tied to student test Now you have the NCLB waiver, now you don’t :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:

Bullying, lack of counselors are barriers to child wellness

(Va.) One in five high school students in the U.S. was bullied last year, according to results from a new survey on student health and safety. But girls, the report found, experienced cyberbullying at twice the rate of boys.

by Carrie Marovich / 6h 

The 2008 Common Core Sales Job: Part Three | deutsch29

The 2008 Common Core Sales Job: Part Three | deutsch29:

The 2008 Common Core Sales Job: Part Three

May 27, 2014

In 2008, the National Governors Association (NGA), the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), and Achieve, Inc., released a report, Benchmarking for Success: Ensuring U.S. Students Receive a World-class Education.

I have examined this report in two previous posts.  In Part One of my series on this report, I considered the report’s absence of discussions of national debt in promoting the faulty goal of  “global competition” via nationally standardized education. In Part Two, I consider the individuals authoring, “advising on,” and financially supporting the report.

In this third and final post, I examine the idea of “benchmarking,” which is supposed to be the primary purpose of the NGA/CCSSO report.

Nevertheless, this report is not a detailed accounting of benchmarking specific standards. It is only an argument in favor of the idea of international benchmarking of American education standards.

The “benchmarking” promoted by this report is hardly sufficient for determining national “success.”

“Benchmarking” to Beat All Others

The report begins with stating that the purpose of international (educational) benchmarking is “to identify and learn from top performers and rapid improvers.” The question is, “top performers” and “rapid improvers” in what sense?

Why, in terms of nebulously-defined, internationally-compared “graduation rates” and, of course, on international tests such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS).

“Graduation rate” is can be defined in any number of ways. One might count only individuals who make it to high school, or who make it to the final year of high school, or who complete high school in a given number of years, or who technically quit high school but complete some alternative course of study.

Graduation rates are also affected by the courses studied. Some “graduates” might The 2008 Common Core Sales Job: Part Three | deutsch29:

Research: INEQUALITY IN TEACHING AND SCHOOLING: SUPPORTING HIGH-QUALITY TEACHING AND LEADERSHIP IN LOW-INCOME SCHOOLS - @coolcatteacher

Research: INEQUALITY IN TEACHING AND SCHOOLING: SUPPORTING HIGH-QUALITY TEACHING AND LEADERSHIP IN LOW-INCOME SCHOOLS - @coolcatteacher:

 Research: INEQUALITY IN TEACHING AND SCHOOLING: SUPPORTING HIGH-QUALITY TEACHING AND LEADERSHIP IN LOW-INCOME SCHOOLS

Excerpted from A Notion at Risk: Preserving Public Education as an Engine for Social Mobility, Richard D. Kahlenberg, Editor
2000

by Linda Darling-Hammond and Laura Post

This important excerpt of a larger book hits on the quality of teachers and the success of children in low-income schools. If you want a better school, spend money on staff development and helping your teachers become more proficient. This article is full of research and important topics of conversation among teachers and policy makers.

“Longitudinal studies in Tennessee and Dallas, Texas found that differences in teacher effectiveness are an extremely strong determinant of differences in student learning, far outweighing the effects of differences in class size and heterogeneity.” P 128-129 http://www.stanford.edu/~ldh/publications/LDH-Post-Inequality.pdf

If you haven’t read this article, take the time to dive through with a highlighter and prepare to discuss the implications. Teacher quality and teacher education makes a big difference. Sadly, the first thing most states have cut is teacher training with some states even making the move to limit teacher education and make sure they are “in the classroom.”

While being in the classroom is important, being well educated is even more important. I find that when I learn new methods of teaching and strategies, I become a better teacher through the practice of working to improve my classroom.

I’ve put this article in my Pocket app to read more deeply this summer.

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES:

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Gov. Chris Christie to Mayor Baraka

"I also made very clear to [Baraka] that it is the state government that runs the school system in Newark, and that while I will talk with him and hear his ideas, that we are the deciders on what happens in the school system.” -- Thom Hartman

Chicago Alderman "Slow Eddie" Burke

“There are a lot of weirdos roaming around..." -- Sun-Times

Times reporter Jennifer Medina

In the car, the police said, were three semiautomatic handguns, along with magazines loaded with more than 400 rounds of ammunition — all bought legally at local gun stores. -- New York Times

Pope Francis

"The time has come for everyone to find  Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES:

School librarians a rare find in California public schools | EdSource Today

School librarians a rare find in California public schools | EdSource Today:

School librarians a rare find in California public schools

May 26th, 2014 | Add a Comment | 
By Lillian Mongeau

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School librarian Shannon Englebrecht reminds Tori Reese, 8, that she has several books overdue.Englebrecht allows students at Charles Drew Preparatory Academy, a public school in San Francisco, to check out as many books as they want. Credit: LillianMongeau, EdSource

Shannon Englebrecht, who works for the San Francisco Unified School District, is poised to become one of a rare breed in California when her hours are increased next year: a full-time public school librarian.

California employed 804 school librarians in 2012-13, which translates to one certified school librarian for every 7,784 students in 2012-13, according to data from the California Department of Education. That is the lowest per-student ratio of any state in the country. The national average in the fall of 2011, the most recent year for which data is available, was one school librarian for every 1,022 students, according to The National Center for Education Statistics.

The lack of certified librarians has led to a decrease in student access to books, a decline in student research skills and the loss of an important resource for teachers, said Janice See-Gilmore, president of the California School Library Association.

“It’s actually pretty dreadful,” See-Gilmore said. “In 1999 we had 1,300 teacher librarians. We’re just going in the wrong direction.”

(Click to enlarge.) There are fewer school librarians in California today than there were in 1988. (Note: Data for years 1989-1997, 1999 and 2009 is approximate.) Sources: California Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics

State funding for school libraries has never been steady. Prior to 1994, there was no money specifically set aside for them. Between 1994 and 2009, various statewide initiatives – from a check-off on income tax forms to a block grant program for districts – funneled vastly varying amounts of money to public school libraries. Those amounts ranged from $266,000 to $158.5 million annually.

Beginning in 2009, the funding set aside for libraries became “flexible,” meaning it could be spent on other priorities as districts scrambled to slash their budgets during the recessiSchool librarians a rare find in California public schools | EdSource Today:

Unlikely Allies Uniting to Fight School Changes - NYTimes.com

Unlikely Allies Uniting to Fight School Changes - NYTimes.com:

Unlikely Allies Uniting to Fight School Changes

Rick Womick, a Republican lawmaker, and Emily Mitchell, a teacher,
both oppose changes in education policy in
 Tennessee. CreditJoe Buglewicz for The New York Times

SMYRNA, Tenn. — She is a fan of MSNBC, supports abortion rights and increased government spending in schools, and believes unions should have the right to strike. He watches Fox News, opposes abortion and is a fiscal conservative who voted three years ago to strip teachers unions of collective bargaining rights.

Yet Emily Mitchell, a wiry, 4-foot-9-inch Democrat and first-grade teacher at David Youree Elementary School here, sees State Representative Rick Womick, a 6-foot-2-inch conservative Republican, as an important ally. Their common cause: battling new high-stakes standardized tests and some other hot-button policies in public education.

“I always viewed him as the enemy, the guy that would never see our side,” said Ms. Mitchell, who is president of the Rutherford County chapter of the Tennessee Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union. But after she met Mr. Womick at a church function in February of last year, she said, “I realized that even though he’s polar opposite politically from what I believe in, we both agreed on a lot of things on education.”

With tensions running high over issues surrounding academic benchmarks, standardized testing and performance evaluations for educators, unlikely coalitions of teachers, lawmakers and parents from the left and right are increasingly banding together to push back against what they see as onerous changes in education policy. Some have Tea Party Republicans and teachers unions on the same side.

In Oklahoma, teachers unions gave strong support to a bill, sponsored by Republicans, that would overturn a law requiring third graders to be held back simply on the basis of the results of one standardized test. (Last week, that coalition helped the Legislature overturn Gov. Mary Fallin’s veto.)

In New Jersey, a bill that would slow down the introduction of the Common Core education standards and the use of test scores in teacher evaluations passed the Assembly Education Committee with rare unanimous support. And in New York, grass-roots opposition on the left and the right to testing and the Common Core, a set of national reading and math standards for elementary, middle and high school students that have been adopted by 45 Unlikely Allies Uniting to Fight School Changes - NYTimes.com:

Marie Corfield: Rigor: The death of public education (no really)

Marie Corfield: Rigor: The death of public education (no really):

Rigor: The death of public education (no really)

Photo Credit

What's worse than education 'reform'? Educators who drink the reformy Kool-Aid.

As a product of 12 years of Catholic education in New Jersey the 60s and 70s I learned a thing or two about the roots of the English language. While I didn't have any art, music, science, PE or health classes until high school, I learned a great deal about phonics and diagramming sentences, and just enough about Latin to allow me to pass in freshman year.

I didn't want to take Latin, but Principal Sr. Anne Williams, told me that since I was smart enough to take French, I was smart enough to take Latin, too. Wait... what?!?! I didn't sign up for two languages! I signed up for French l and Intro to Physical Science, the basic freshman science class. Idid not want to take Latin! I needed that science class! I didn't care that my sister—God bless her— was president of the Latin Club for four years; I was not looking to be a legacy! And besides, what kind of cockamamie logic says that a person is any smarter because of the language they choose to study? But that was a time when educators were respected. One did not argue with teachers or principals, especially habit-wearing ones with a man's name. I guess enrollment numbers in Latin class were down and they needed to keep Sr. James Eileen busy.

Latin is a clumsy language. It doesn't roll off the tongue like Spanish, French or Italian. Because I was forced to take it, I hated it. I dug my heels in and did just enough to pass the class. I was not going to put one extra ounce of effort into something I didn't want to study. And I did not want to sing the Latin Declension Song!

Ohhhhhh... are we having a 'Slowly I turned/Niagara Falls' moment? Yeeees... you remember the Declension song, don't you? That snappy little ditty invented to help Latin learners remember verb tenses and such. Are your eyes glazing over? On a whim I Marie Corfield: Rigor: The death of public education (no really):

UFT Rank and File Needs Gene Hackman.southbronxschool.com

http://www.southbronxschool.com:

UFT Rank and File Needs Gene Hackman

My son had a baseball tournament upstate this weekend and while enjoying the free pre-made, formerly frozen free breakfast at the Quality Inn of Fishkill yesterday morning I decided against Poughkeepsie Journal in favor of my Sunday true and tried Daily News.
reading the

After reading the sports section I turned to the op-ed page to read El Presidenté Mulgrew's fascinating story on how teacher's, but in his reality the UFT, are the real reformers. As I was reading, my wife said that she had never seen someone's jaw actually hit the table before.

I am not going to rehash or add my two cents. It's been done. Others have done it. I shan't. But just two thoughts.

One, we wouldn't be in this predicament if in 2002 we had some cojones and didn't cave into the pressure of mayoral control. Yes, the money seemed great at the time, but that was the beginning.

Secondly, the final nail was put in the coffin in 2005. So, please, spare us the "I found religion" spiel now. It is too late. WE, THE TEACHERS, THE RANK AND FILE, THE FRONT LINE, have been bullied, beaten, abused, and bruised up too long. So forgive us if we are not buying the hard sell. Forgive us if we say we heard this all before. It's too late. You can't be the tough guy on the playground now when the bully is nowhere to be found. The time to be the tough guy to fight for us and unions came and went. WHY SHOULD WE TRUST THE UFT?

We need Gene Hackman.


In the 1972 movie "The Poseidon Adventure," Gene Hackman played Rev. Frank Scott. When the ship http://www.southbronxschool.com:

Kimble's Corner: University of Western Topeka Spring 2014 Commencement

Kimble's Corner: University of Western Topeka Spring 2014 Commencement:

University of Western Topeka Spring 2014 Commencement

 On Saturday, I was lucky enough to be invited to speak at the University of Western Topeka's 2014 graduation. This is a great school and there's a reason that it's known as the University of Michigan of Kansas. You can visit the UWT web page athttp://www.uwesterntopeka.org/

Anti-Common Core Link Banned by Facebook: We Must be Winning the War | Missouri Education Watchdog

Anti-Common Core Link Banned by Facebook: We Must be Winning the War | Missouri Education Watchdog:

Anti-Common Core Link Banned by Facebook: We Must be Winning the War

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See this notice? Plans to eliminate common core and adopt common core standards are detected to be “unsafe” by Facebook security standards.

Dr. Sandra Stotsky refused to sign off on the ELA Common Core Standards.  She published a plan (in Breitbart) for school districts to stop CCSS implementation in their districts.  When folks tried to share it on Facebook, the above notice appeared.

Here is the plan published in Local School Districts Should Eliminate Common Core and Adopt Stronger Standards:

Oklahoma is the most recent state to try to eliminate the Common Core standards. Many Oklahomans deserve credit for the bill Gov. Mary Fallin (R) may sign this week. The truth, however, is there will be no end to the Gates Foundation effort to eliminate “white privilege” in K-12 with deliberately weak secondary school standards, rather than to strengthen secondary school coursework for all students with academically rigorous and internationally benchmarked standards.

Perhaps the following steps could be taken at the local level to make sure that state boards of education, commissioners, or departments of education don’t select people for drafting a new set of state standards who are committed to Common Core. Despite any legislative oversight that may be built into bills to eliminate Common Core, states trying to extricate themselves from Common Core may yet experience a version of Gov. Mike Anti-Common Core Link Banned by Facebook: We Must be Winning the War | Missouri Education Watchdog: