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Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Badass Teachers Association - Wizard of Oz by Love Light - BATs - YouTube

BATs - YouTube:






Badass Teacher (BAT) Association
WELCOME TO THE BAT CAVE
Badass Teacher Association Web Site



Surprise announcement!!!! BATs will be conducting a National Teacher's Congress in DC in 2015!! We will vote on the date and we will swarm the Capitol!!!! STAY TUNED FOR MORE INFO!!










 

BATs

Information about the Badass Teacher Association created by BATs.
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How the Common Core Lost Teacher Support | Peter Greene

How the Common Core Lost Teacher Support | Peter Greene:



How the Common Core Lost Teacher Support



Support for the Core among teachers dropped like a stone, from 76% in 2013 to 46% in 2014. That's a lot of love lost. Now, as we move from the "Holy schneikies!" phase into the "Got some splainin' to do" phase, we'll start to ask the big question.
Why?
Over at The Fordham, Mike Petrilli hopes he knows why -- Note the phrase, "they will be used to hold public schools accountable for their performance." Perhaps these words triggered the more negative response. I think Petrilli is hoping in vain. I think there's a much more likely explanation for CCSS's bad year among teachers.

Let's think back to May of 2013. Personally, I'm a fine example of what teachers were like at that point. I didn't know a lot about the Core, and what I did know didn't sound all that bad. As far as I'd heard, a bunch of important people had called together a bunch of teachers to write some standards that could be used across the country to bring a little coherence to the higgledy-piggledy crazy-quilt that is US education. I'm not really a fan of national standards, but as long as they came from educational experts and were largely voluntary, it couldn't hurt to look at them. Heck, if you had asked me in May of 2013 if I supported the Common Core standards, I might very well have said yes. And though there were teachers out there who had already caught on, there were plenty of teachers like me who were perfectly willing to give the whole business a shot.
So how did the reformsters lose all those hearts and minds?
I think it's a measure of how detailed and painstaking and inch-by-inch this massive debate has been that it's easy to lose track of the big picture, the many massively boneheaded things that CCSS supporters did along the way. Let's reminisce about how so many teachers were turned off.
The lying.
Remember how supporters of the Core used to tell us all the time that these standards were written by teachers? All. The. Time. Do you know why they've stopped saying that? Because it's not true, and at this point, most everybody knows it's not true. The "significant" teacher input, the basis in solid research -- all false. When someone is trying to sell you medicine and they tell you that it was developed by top doctors and researchers and you find out it wasn't and they have to switch to, "Well, it was How the Common Core Lost Teacher Support | Peter Greene:
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It's Not Just About the Test: A Teacher Talks About the Classroom - WNYC

It's Not Just About the Test: A Teacher Talks About the Classroom - WNYC:



It's Not Just About the Test: A Teacher Talks About the Classroom

Monday, August 25, 2014 - 04:00 AM

By Beth Fertig
  • Math teacher Jose Vilson, who is Dominican and Haitian, believes teachers should pay more attention to their students' cultural backgroundsEnlarge
    Math teacher Jose Vilson, who is Dominican and Haitian, believes teachers should pay more attention to their students' cultural backgrounds(Tafari Stevenson-Howard)
Jose Luis Vilson has been blogging for years about his experiences in the classroom and writing poetry. Now, the 32-year-old math teacher at an Inwood middle school has written a book,"This is Not a Test" (Haymarket Books). Vilson discussed his inspirations, and his hopes for changing education, with Schoolbook. Here are excerpts from the conversation.
What was the inspiration for the book and its title?
It can be looked at from a bunch of different lenses, which is what I wanted. For educators, I thought it was sort of a rallying call to try to get more teacher stories out there about the things that happen in their own classrooms from a personal perspective, looking from the inside and working its way out. It's far too often where educators are limited in terms of getting the chance to speak up about education policy and how it affects their classrooms.
You talk about how you are "pro-whole child rather than anti-testing." What is it you felt teachers weren't hearing enough of during the No Child Left Behind era?
These tests very much, like, you have to drive all the instruction towards that test. A lot of folks were even saying, "Yeah, we could teach to the test," but we're just starting to call it that. Even though they were doing test prep all throughout the year and trying to get kids ready for the test. I'm sure it was even more exacerbated in schools where there is the threat of being shut down every semester or so.
In terms of my teaching, I was felt like, "Oh snap, we can do way better than this. I just don't know how." And that's where my learning came from. How do we get past this culture of it's all about that test at the end of the year, for two- or three-hour tests that we have to take?
You talk about the inner racial turmoil you felt in your mostly white Catholic high school and growing up on the Lower East Side. Is there an element teachers are missing in terms of getting who their kids are?
Absolutely. I think there's a lot of folks who still do believe in this idea of post-racial America, which we've seen in recent weeks hasn't always been true. I think often teachers haven't been respected as to their own personal experience and what they bring into the classroom in order to truly effect change. If your students are a different culture than you are, being colorblind isn't an option anymore. I think our students are becoming more adept at It's Not Just About the Test: A Teacher Talks About the Classroom - WNYC:
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NEA President-elect, Supt. Torlakson and CA’s Educators Kick Off Degrees Not Debt Campaign - California Teachers Association

NEA President-elect, Supt. Torlakson and CA’s Educators Kick Off Degrees Not Debt Campaign - California Teachers Association:



NEA President-elect, Supt. Torlakson and CA’s Educators Kick Off Degrees Not Debt Campaign





Contacts: Staci Maiers, NEA Communications 202-270-5333 cell, smaiers@nea.org; Claudia Briggs, CTA Communications 916-296-4087 cell, cbriggs@cta.org; Becky Zoglman, CTA Communications 415-298-3504 cell, bzoglman@cta.org

Student Loan Debt Exceeds Credit Card Debt Nationwide

*** Thursday, August 21, 2014 ***

As college costs skyrocket and federal student aid lags, too many students are forced to borrow staggering amounts of money to pay for higher education. Existing student debt now exceeds $1.2 trillion and is higher than credit card debt in this country. The average student owes $29,400, but some report owing ten times as much. At these levels student debt isn’t just a burden, it’s a barrier to millions of middle-class Americans seeking college degrees and career preparation.
National Education Association President-elect Lily Eskelsen García will join California’s educators as well as Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson (in Northern CA) for two news conferences to kick off the state and national campaign, Degrees Not Debt, aimed at reducing student loan debt through loan forgiveness programs, lower-repayment plans and reinvesting in higher education so college is affordable for all. The campaign is supported by NEA, California Teachers Association, Student CTA, California Faculty Association, Community College Association and a coalition of education and community organizations.
WHEN/WHERE:   Thursday, August 21 – Events in Los Angeles and Oakland
10:00 AM  - News Conferences to Announce California and National Degrees Not Debt Campaign to reducestudent loan debt and ensure college affordability for all students
California State University-Northridge
Jerome Richfield Hall – Room 118 
18111 Nordhoff Street, Northridge, CA 91330
3:00 PM - Degrees Not Debt News Conference with Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson and CTA President Dean E. Vogel
La Escuelita Elementary School
School auditorium
1050 2nd Avenue, Oakland, CA 94606
###
The 325,000-member CTA is affiliated with the nearly 3 million-member National Education Association
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Common Core gets AWFUL review in new study | The Daily Caller

Common Core gets AWFUL review in new study | The Daily Caller:



Common Core gets AWFUL review in new study

The Last Day of Pompeii by Karl Briullov / Wikimedia Commons


Bad news for supporters of national education curriculum: States with education standards most closely aligned to Common Core fared worse on math tests than states with their own standards, according to a new study.
The study, conducted by the Brookings Institution, compared standardized test scores for all 50 states over the last five years. It found that states using education standards that are most dissimilar to Common Core tended to score the highest on math.
Though the difference is small, it nevertheless undermines the claims of Common Core’s high profile backers, which include President Obama’s Department of Education, several moderate Republican governors, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
“Supporters of Common Core argue that strong, effective standards will sweep away such skepticism by producing lasting, significant gains in student learning,” wrote the study’s authors. “So far at least–and it is admittedly the early innings of a long ball game–there are no signs of such an impressive accomplishment.”
States that followed a hybrid approach to standards — utilizing some aspects of the Common Core and some aspects of their own standards — fared worse than both full-Common Core states and non-Common Core states.
Common Core is an increasingly divisive issue. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Republican governors such as New Jersey’s Chris Christie and Florida’s Jeb Bush vigorously support its implementation. The Gates Foundation has poured millions of dollars into efforts to promote the standards. Thanks to heavy establishment support, the standards are currently being implemented in most of America’s 50 states.
Grassroots conservatives — and even teachers unions, who oppose the standardized testing component — are pushing back, however, and full implementation is threatened in at least a few states.
Neal McCluskey, associate director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute, noted that Brookings isn’t typically known for publishing arch conservative opinions.
“This study, from the hardly Tea Party aligned Brookings Institution, is another nail in the coffin of the over-hyped promises of many Core advocates,” he told The Daily Caller.
The study provides useful evidence than Common Core in theory and Common Core in practice are two very different things, said McCluskey.
“It’s increasingly clear that even if the Core is a significant uptick in rigor over previous standards in many states–a contested ‘if’–translating that into improved academic performance is very difficult,” he said. (RELATED: EPIC FAIL: Parents reveal insane Common Core problems)
Joy Pullman, a research fellow at The Heartland Institute and managing editor of School Reform News, said that the Brookings study might not be quite so damning, but only because its research was based on a wildly flawed pro-Common Core study.
“The authors [of the original study] basically played with their data to push their conclusion that Common-Core lookalike states had higher performance,” she told TheDC. “So this new study bases its analysis on the old study’s rating scale, which itself is flawed.”
In either case, there’s little solid data to suggest that Common Core-aligned states perform better on math. Pullman pointed to a portion of the Brookings analysis that predicted Common Core would make no difference in students’ math performances for a least a quarter century.
“What a horrific condemnation of the piles of mandates, taxpayer money, teacher time, and disruption to students Common Core has caused,” she said. “All that — so far for nothing, and with no signs of any positive return in sight.” (RELATED: Is this the worst Common Core math problem in human history?)
It is a shame that Common Core implementation is so widespread, given the lack of


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2014/03/18/common-core-gets-awful-review-in-new-study/#ixzz3AyYBaFBT


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