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Thursday, September 25, 2014

Democrats Can Win With A Public Education Agenda – By Fighting To Fund It - Education Opportunity Network

Education Opportunity Network:



Education Opportunity Network -










Democrats Can Win With A Public Education Agenda – By Fighting To Fund It



Is it possible that education is the issue that will determine whether results of the upcoming election swing the United States Senate to Republican Party control? Will there be a dramatic change in party control of state governors’ offices because of how candidates stand on supporting pubic schools? As the November contests approach, these are […]




Recognizing Real Leadership For Education Progress: Mayor Bill de Blasio



What’s wrong with this picture? During the nation’s Back-to-School Season, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has been touring states in a bus to “highlight the champions of reform.” At one stop, where he spoke to an audience of parents at a Nashville, Tennessee middle school, he challenged the National PTA, according to reporters for […]




The Education Conversation ‘Reformers’ Want Versus The One They Get



What will $12 million get you? How about a “conversation about education?” That’s what a new organization Education Post aims to get for its “initial grants,” courtesy of, according to education reporter Lindsay Layton of The Washington Post, ” the Broad Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Walton Family Foundation, and an anonymous donor.” In a debut […]




Charter Schools Don’t Need An Ad Campaign, They Need Regulation



This time of year, while classroom teachers and administrators in public schools are busy welcoming students back to a new school year and figuring out how they’re going to cope with devastating financial constraints, advocates in the charter schools industry are propping up their image with an extensive new public relations campaign, called “Truth About […]




Back To Schools White People Cannot See



As the season for new school openings rolls out, there are reasons for a new consciousness-raising about those schools – the kind of consciousness-raising that can be brought about when there’s a shock to the system like Ferguson, Missouri. Of the many heartfelt, well thought-out, and clearly written responses to the ongoing travesty happening in Ferguson, […]




‘Better Than Republicans,’ Not Good Enough For Education



A common admonition progressives have gotten used to hearing over the years is to support more conservative Democratic candidates because “Republicans are worse.” This admonition makes some sense in electoral politics, when, in most cases, progressives face a ballot box decision where they have to choose the “lesser evil” instead of someone who wants to […]




Education ‘Reform’ Loses The Netroots



Every year Netroots Nation is arguably the most important annual event in the progressive community and a telling barometer of what is on the minds of, as Howard Dean put it, “the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.” Last week’s meeting was no exception. Mainstream coverage of that event has been focused exclusively on the […]

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Why Teachers' Unions & Due Process Matter - Bridging Differences - Education Week

Why Teachers' Unions & Due Process Matter - Bridging Differences - Education Week:



Why Teachers' Unions & Due Process Matter

By Leo Casey on September 25, 2014 8:13 AM


Today, Leo Casey of the Albert Shanker Institute joins Deborah Meier on the Bridging Differences blog.
Deb:
So we begin our conversation with the idea of democracy. It is the pivotal idea in the political heritage we share, as a strong conception of democracy has been at the root of the work both of us have done in schools, in unions, and in civic life. We both came to that work with a conviction that we were part of a democratic left, as our vision of a better world had democracy as its non-negotiable center. On the subject of democracy, we will have to do some work to find any significant differences that need bridging.
American democracy is, as you say, in trouble. Economic inequality has reached heights unseen since the late 1800s. Unaccountable money in our politics, turned into a deluge by Citizens United, is making a mockery of the bedrock democratic principle of one person, one vote. The right of all Americans to political voice and self-government, hard won by epic struggles and great sacrifices, is being whittled away by voter suppression laws. Courts create new rights for corporations out of whole cloth, while they make it harder and harder for working people to exercise their rights.
Why does America find itself in the middle of a new Gilded Age, with its democracy embattled? In large measure, I would argue, because a beleaguered American labor movement has been in retreat for three decades, losing battle after battle. It wasn't always this way. For most of the 20thcentury, the political power of American unions was decisive in campaigns for social and economic reform, such as the New Deal and the Great Society, and in the struggles for freedom and human rights, such as the civil rights movement. But, by the end of the century, the once great industrial unions that had led and won those battles were shadows of their former selves. There remained only a handful of American public-sector unions that possessed the organizational capacity and the political strength to challenge growing corporate power in elections, in legislatures, and in the streets. Central to this group were teachers' unions, the one part of the American labor movement in which the majority of its sector was still organized.
As the strength of the American labor movement waned, emboldened corporate power increasingly set its sights on the remaining centers of union strength, teachers' unions and other public-sector Why Teachers' Unions & Due Process Matter - Bridging Differences - Education Week:
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Michigan ACLU Exposes Educational Catastrophe in Gov. Rick Snyder’s Takeover of Detroit’s Schools | janresseger

Michigan ACLU Exposes Educational Catastrophe in Gov. Rick Snyder’s Takeover of Detroit’s Schools | janresseger:



Michigan ACLU Exposes Educational Catastrophe in Gov. Rick Snyder’s Takeover of Detroit’s Schools

Posted on September 25, 2014 by 
Metro Detroit Times has just published an extraordinary expose of the software-based curriculum that was imposed in 2012 in 12 Detroit, Michigan schools.  These were the bulk of schools in Michigan Governor Rick Snyder’s new Education Achievement Authority (EAA), a state agency created to take over Michigan’s schools with the lowest test scores.  “In all, about 10,000 students—largely poor, predominantly African American, often lagging years behind in terms of academics—would be the test subjects.”
According to the report’s author, Curt Guyette, an investigative reporter with the Michigan American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Snyder’s state school takeover was intended to originate with a number of low-scoring schools in Detroit and then take over so-called failing schools across the state; however, the legislation to expand the Education Achievement Authority beyond Detroit never passed in the legislature.  Snyder is known to have modeled his idea on the Louisiana Recovery School District, that took over public schools in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina,
Guyette describes how the EAA was created in Michigan, “The system itself would be unique, with all strings leading back to the governor. The legal loophole through which the EAA slipped into being is a little-used state law that allows two units of government, acting in cooperation, to create a third public entity.  In this case, it was Detroit Public Schools (DPS)—under the control of a Snyder-appointed emergency manager—and the Eastern Michigan University Board of Regents, the majority of whom are gubernatorial appointees, that entered into what’s called an inter-local agreement that created the EAA.  It is overseen by an 11-person board, with the governor appointing seven members and EMU and the DPS’s emergency manager each selecting two more.”
In 2012, EAA hired John Covington as chancellor.  Covington had recently left Kansas City Public Schools (just two weeks before that school district lost its accreditation).  Covington brought along a team from Kansas City, headed up by Mary Esselman, who became the EAA’s deputy chancellor and who led the launch of a massive, software-based curriculum called Buzz—developed by one Utah company, Agilix Labs, and supplemented with additional educational software from another Utah company, the School Improvement Network.
All this was supposed to “personalize” and “individualize” learning for the students in Detroit’s experiment.  “But in reality, what internal EAA documents reveal is the extent to which teachers and students were, over the course of two school years, used as whetstones to hone a badly flawed product being pitched as cutting-edge technology.”  Mary Esselman is Michigan ACLU Exposes Educational Catastrophe in Gov. Rick Snyder’s Takeover of Detroit’s Schools | janresseger:

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BREAKING NEWS!!! Para Harassed at MS 61 in Brooklyn! southbronxschool

http://www.southbronxschool.com:



BREAKING NEWS!!! Para Harassed at MS 61 in Brooklyn!

It seems that MS 61 in Brooklyn is turning into quite the soap opera. A dangerous soap opera.



For those who don't know or need reminding, MS 61has been in the news lately due to the diligence of retired teacher Jeff Storobinsky and his Facebook group, Money Over Age.



First some background.



A former colleague at MS 61 who in the last six months had suffered a stroke and currently was undergoing chemo treatments, had passed away suddenly and in his grief he posted this on his the MOA page. 



We all handle death in different ways. Some mourn privately, some want to mourn with others. Jeff clearly was in mourning. What came next was not part of the mourning process.



Jeff's fiance still is employed at 61 as a para. She has taken a lot of heat for being Jeff's fiance and being close and that is probably par for the course. We here at SBSB have no problem, as we are sure his fiance doesn't, that if yo

u don't want to be her friend, don't want to socialize with her that is fine. Let her do her job, let her work in a safe environment, and just be courteous to her.



This morning, September 24, 2014 Jeff's fiance Marisol found the following attached to her time card;



Take your time reading it and take even more time to put your eyeballs back in their sockets. Yes, even The Crack Team blushed.



Marisol is beside herself. She immediately left the building and headed home to the safe embrace of Jeff where she still remains.



Jeff, a Jew, in all probability will forgo celebrating the 2nd holiest day of the Jewish calendar in order to accompany Marisol tomorrow as they meet with NYPD detectives. Already this deviant has kept Jeff from partaking in the celebrations which will mark the beginning of 5775. Perhaps while at the local NYPD precinct Jeff might be able to seek solace in hearing the distant sounds of the Shofar from Williamsburg.



But where will the solace and safety come from for Marisol? How long will she have to be looking over http://www.southbronxschool.com:
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