Ag Groups Call on USDA to Enforce “Buy American” Provision in Federal School Lunch Program | KTIC Radio

Ag Groups Call on USDA to Enforce “Buy American” Provision in Federal School Lunch Program | KTIC Radio:

AG GROUPS CALL ON USDA TO ENFORCE “BUY AMERICAN” PROVISION IN FEDERAL SCHOOL LUNCH PROGRAM

Fifty agricultural trade associations, farmer co-ops and agribusinesses yesterday urged Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to strengthen enforcement of the “Buy American” provision for participants in the National School Lunch Program and the School Breakfast Program. The call came after a recent investigative report in the Sacramento Bee found that the Sacramento City Unified School District had spent tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars on imported Chinese canned fruit.

“Our organizations are deeply concerned that the Buy America Act requirements of the National School Lunch Act are not being adequately monitored and enforced,” the groups wrote to the Secretary. “Our concerns were amplified with the Sacramento City Unified School District’s recent acknowledgement that they have been purchasing canned peaches, pears and applesauce from China. Since there is currently no transparency regarding school purchases of imported products, we must assume there are other districts throughout the country purchasing imported food products.”

Secretary Vilsack and the Department should focus on ways in which the Buy American provision can be better enforced. Suggestions included more closely monitoring procurement specifications and contractor performance.

A copy of the letter that includes a list of signing organizations can be found athttp://ncfc.org/letter/enforcement-of-buy-american-provision/; the Sacramento Beearticle can be found on their web site at http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/education/article45010839.html.

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 Ag Groups Call on USDA to Enforce “Buy American” Provision in Federal School Lunch Program | KTIC Radio:

Our organizations are deeply concerned that the Buy America Act requirements of the National School Lunch Act are not being adequately monitored and enforced.

- Ag Group Letter to Ag Sec. Vilsack

Why Chicago Teacher Sarah Chambers Is Voting To Strike | I AM AN EDUCATOR

Why Chicago Teacher Sarah Chambers Is Voting To Strike | I AM AN EDUCATOR:

Why Chicago Teacher Sarah Chambers Is Voting To Strike

In 2012, the Chicago Teachers Union waged a successful strike that revived the lessons of social justice unionism and taught educators around the country that it was possible to beat back the corporate education reform agenda. This strike was the opening salvo for much of the recent uprising around the country against the privatization of education, for the resources our schools need, and against the abuses of high-stakes testing.

When I heard that the Chicago Teacher’s Union (CTU) members started a social media campaign to explain why they were voting once again to authorize a strike, I knew I had to find Sarah Chambers’ video.

Sarah is special education teacher for Chicago Public Schools, and serves as the elementary functional VP for CTU executive board. She is an author who published an essay about the testing boycott she helped to lead in the anthology I edited, More Than a Score: The New Uprising Against High-Stakes Testing.  She has been a tireless advocate for social justice education and a relentless defender of her students from the embattled Chicago Mayor, Rahm “The School Yard Bully” Emanuel.

I asked Sarah to explain to me the context of the strike vote and she told me,

Chicago Public Schools are trying to cut teachers pay by 12%, raise class sizes, cut 5,000 teachers, raise health care costs, removal of steps and lanes and cut teacher pensions.  CTU is refusing to accept these proposals.  CTU is demanding small class sizes, freeze on 

Why Chicago Teacher Sarah Chambers Is Voting To Strike | I AM AN EDUCATOR: 

No Child Left Behind: An Obituary : NPR Ed : NPR

No Child Left Behind: An Obituary : NPR Ed : NPR:

No Child Left Behind: An Obituary

The U.S. Senate is expected to vote as soon as tomorrow on replacing the nation's big education law, known since 2001 as No Child Left Behind.

And President Obama is expected to sign the new version, ending an era marked by bitter fights between the federal government, states and schools.

So as it dies, we thought an obituary was in order.

Yup, an obituary. Because the law's critics and defenders all agree on one thing: that No Child Left Behind took on a life of its own.

Actually, they agree on one other thing, too: "If No Child Left Behind was a person, he or she should have died a long time ago." That's how the outgoing U.S. Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, puts it. "It's about time to finish it off and to bury it. And to do something much better."

NCLB was expected to expire of old age back in 2007, but Congress couldn't find a replacement. So the law hung on.

While most folks are now happy to see it go, NCLB wasn't always this reviled.

Here's a No Child Left Behind eulogy from Kathryn Matayoshi, the state schools superintendent in Hawaii: "Worked very, very hard. Was often misunderstood. Wanted to do the right thing, but in the end, really didn't get where he wanted to go."

Let's break that down. First, what NCLB got right.

Arne Duncan points out that, before the law required states to test students annually and report the results, "Our nation didn't talk about, you know, how black children were doing versus white children. How Latino children were doing. It didn't talk about achievement gaps. It hid behind averages."

NCLB came in and told schools: No more hiding. You now have to break down your student test scores — to give an honest picture of whether you're serving all kids. And, sure enough, many weren't.

Sonja Santelises is the former chief academic officer for the Baltimore schools and now works for The Education Trust, an advocacy group. She says NCLB reminds her of someone many of us will spend time with at the dinner table this holiday season: "You know, the aunt that says all of the hidden stuff that no one else wants to say at the table. And got in our face about it."

That may be uncomfortable, she says, but it was good. So, where did NCLB go bad?

"But that same aunt is just overly simplistic," Santelises explains, "and makes these broad generalizations."

Some of NCLB's mandates were unrealistic: that all kids should be proficient by the year 2014 and that all schools can be fixed using the same small box of tools. 

Rick Hess studies education at the American Enterprise Institute and says that, when No Child Left Behind: An Obituary : NPR Ed : NPR:

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Claypool won't negotiate with CTU. With Rahm on the ropes, he has no juice.

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Claypool won't negotiate with CTU. With Rahm on the ropes, he has no juice.:

Claypool won't negotiate with CTU. With Rahm on the ropes, he has no juice.

CPS broke on purpose. Claypool has no juice.

As Chicago teachers take their strike vote this week, CEO Forrest Claypool and Rahm's hand-picked school board, are refusing to negotiate a contract with the CTU. In a way, it's hard to blame 'em. Broke-on-purpose CPS has little with which to negotiate and Claypool has no political juice.

The board's bargaining position has been badly weakened by a mayor who has autocratic control over the schools, but who's own credibility rating is currently lower than snail shit. Not to mention, Claypool's predecessor is facing trial and prison time for fraud and a new federal Civil Rights investigation underway over violations by Rahm's police department.

Today, the union filed an unfair labor practice charge with the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board, saying they’re ready to enlist the negotiating help of a fact-finding panel that’s part of a lengthy process laid out by state law. The union had Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Claypool won't negotiate with CTU. With Rahm on the ropes, he has no juice.:

The Public Release of Value-Added Scores Does Not (Yet) Impact Real Estate | VAMboozled!

The Public Release of Value-Added Scores Does Not (Yet) Impact Real Estate | VAMboozled!:

The Public Release of Value-Added Scores Does Not (Yet) Impact Real Estate

As per ScienceDaily, a resource “for the latest research news,” research just conducted by economists at Michigan State and Cornell evidences that “New school-evaluation method fails to affect housing prices.” See also a press release about this study on Michigan State’s website here, and see what I believe is a pre-publication version of the full study here.

As asserted in both pieces, the study recently published in the Journal of Urban Economics, is the first to examine how the public release of such data is considered in housing prices. Researchers, more specifically, examined whether and to what extent the (very controversial) public release of teachers’ VAM data by the Los Angeles Times impacted housing prices in Los Angeles. To read a prior post on this release, click here.

While for some time now we have known from similar research studies, conducted throughout the pre-VAM era, that students’ test scores are correlated with (or cause) rises in housing prices, these researchers evidenced that, thus far, the same does not (yet) seem to be true in the case of VAMs. That is, the public consumption of publicly available value-added data, at least in Los Angeles, does not (yet) seem to be correlated with or causing really anything in the housing market.

“The implication: Either people don’t value the popular new measures or they don’t fully understand them.” Perhaps another implication is that it is just (unfortunately) a matter of time. I write this in consideration of the fact that while researchers included data from more than 63,000 home sales as per the Los Angeles County Assessor’s Office, they did so in only the eight-month period following the public release of the VAM data. True effects might be lagged; hence, readers might interpret these results as preliminary, for nowThe Public Release of Value-Added Scores Does Not (Yet) Impact Real Estate | VAMboozled!:

Schools Matter: ASD Crosses Halfway Mark to Certain Failure

Schools Matter: ASD Crosses Halfway Mark to Certain Failure:

ASD Crosses Halfway Mark to Certain Failure

"The effects in the ASD schools were mainly statistically insignificant . . ."

Vanderbilt Peabody has just released a research paper that examines the awful performance of ASD schools in Memphis, Nashville, and Chattanooga. Tennessee's Achievement School District was modeled after the Recovery School District of New Orleans, which was part of the disaster capitalist response to Katrina.

The ASD's stated goal from 2010 was "to move the academic performance of schools taken over from the bottom five percent of schools to the top quartile of schools in Tennessee within five years." 

The ASD started taking over "priority" schools in 2011, and given the results of the Vandy analysis, it is reasonable to ask if ASD could ever come close to meeting its ridiculous goal.    

Below are some of the data from the Report.  Note from the last chart below, the worst of the worst ASD schools are those run by the charter management organizations (CMOs).

The largest effects of these hostile takeovers are not measured in these meager test results, however.  The real significance is born in the accumulated weight of the disrupted lives of parents, children, and teachers, all of whom have suffered and continue to suffer for the benefit of corporate know-nothing paternalists, whose primary aim to build a business model based on the cultural sterilization of poor children. 

 

Schools Matter: ASD Crosses Halfway Mark to Certain Failure:

CURMUDGUCATION: Duncan Remains Relentlessly Wrong

CURMUDGUCATION: Duncan Remains Relentlessly Wrong:

Duncan Remains Relentlessly Wrong

This afternoon, Arne Duncan is at the Learning Forward conference to fall on his sword deliver some comments that include his spirited endorsement of the Every Student Succeeds Act. A portion of his remarks have been released, and they reveal Duncan in fine form as he cheerily supports the bill devoted to repudiating his work, sort of.

The excerpt picks up where Duncan answers the question, "What does this new law mean for your classrooms, schools, and districts?"

He starts by saying there's a lot to be figured out, and that's about the last thing he gets right.

The new law will mean that "you can continue challenging your kids to live up to new, higher standards that you have been working so hard to implement." Which is true. Under ESSA, states are still free to embrace the Common Core, either in original form or under one of its many aliases.

"You will still measure students’ progress every year, typically with new and much better tests that offer actionable information about students’ learning."Oh, Arne. We've been hearing the promise of new tests that aren't the same old standardized bubble test crap for over a decade. They haven't come. They aren't coming. They are never going to come. No large scale standardized test will ever measure critical thinking any more than you can measure hurt with a bathroom scale. He repeats the idea that the feds are really pushing for fewer redundant tests. He is full of it.

"The action from Congress will increase investments in preschool, so that it’s more likely that the CURMUDGUCATION: Duncan Remains Relentlessly Wrong:

Save Our Schools March – It’s Time to March Again ~ Summer 2016

Save Our Schools March – It’s Time to March Again ~ Summer 2016:

2016 Summer March & Rally
Solidarity, Resilience, and Resistance

Many thousands of us gathered on July of 2011 for the Save Our Schools March and Call to Action. We assembled to state our grievances about the state of public education and to share our visions for the future. In that moment, we were the canaries in the coalmine – sickened by an unresponsive political process and its dehumanizing policies. We became the impetus for change, and we took to the streets in solidarity to make it clear:

We who believe in freedom cannot rest,
We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes. ~ Ella Baker

In 2011 we nurtured, supported, and committed to each other and to our children. We have not rested since. We have organized demonstrations, sit-ins, and strikes. We have resisted, written, called, tweeted, blogged, posted and re-posted, sang, spoken, and opted out of high-stakes testing all in our collective struggle for humane public schools and policies.

Coalitions are building and the movement is growing. We are parents and teachers, students and seniors, scholars and community organizers, urban and rural, immigrants and native-born, gay and straight, black, brown, and white realizing that more than ever, we have a common narrative based on democracy, the human right to education and economic and social justice that goes beyond our organizational silos, as important as those silos may be…

It is time to celebrate five years of common struggle and the growth that we have wrought. It is time to march again!!!

Save Our Schools is working with numerous organizations to build a broad coalition of like-minded people – from all walks of life and with diverse causes – to speak and march in solidarity this July in Washington D.C. (date to be determined). We envision actions and festivities for children and adults, which foster awareness and to celebrate democracy by living it. It is an election year, and there can be no better time to show our government and our fellow citizens, “This is what democracy looks like!”

Details are developing each day on this massive event, so join us, support us, and sign up for email updates!

In solidarity,

The Save Our Schools 2016 Summer Coalition

Save Our Schools March – It’s Time to March Again ~ Summer 2016:

Democratic Budget Deal – An irresponsible farce - Wait What?

Democratic Budget Deal – An irresponsible farce - Wait What?:

Democratic Budget Deal – An irresponsible farce

The Connecticut General Assembly will return to the state capital today to vote on a “Democratic Budget Deal” that they claim will eliminate this year’s budget deficit by authorizing Governor Dannel Malloy to cut an additional $93 million in unspecified programs and raiding money from a variety of dedicated special funds.

A CT Mirror article written by Keith Phaneuf and entitled, CT deficit plan taps many special funds and one-time sources, pretty much sums of the Democrat’s budget balancing strategy.

One of the most disturbing provisions of the new “Democratic Budget Deal” is that for the third time in three years the Democrats are going to steal the money that has been set-aside to install seatbelts in school buses and use the funds to help balance the state budget.

On December 20, 2012, the Wait, What? headline read; Remember when school bus seatbelts were a big priority?

Following the tragic school bus accident on Route 84 in Hartford in January 2010, a crash that killed a Rocky Hill student who was attending one of the CREC magnet schools, the legislature kicked into action.

On May 1st of that year the General Assembly passed what was to become Public Act 10-83.

The law created the Connecticut School Bus Seat Belt account, “a separate 

Democratic Budget Deal – An irresponsible farce - Wait What?:

Gov. Christie and Legislature Fail to Fund School Formula, Create Crisis for Newark’s Schools | janresseger

Gov. Christie and Legislature Fail to Fund School Formula, Create Crisis for Newark’s Schools | janresseger:

Gov. Christie and Legislature Fail to Fund School Formula, Create Crisis for Newark’s Schools

The Prize—Dale Russakoff’s book about the plan put in place by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and then Newark Mayor Cory Booker to charterize Newark’s schools and recruit Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg to pay for it—is listed by the NY Times as one of the top 100 books of the year.  It is a fascinating tale of political intrigue and the imposition of the ideology of “school disruption” on the public schools in a very poor community. In September, this blog covered The Prize here and here.

Russakoff’s book isn’t, however, as strong on the gritty fiscal realities for the Newark Public Schools, though the book does demonstrate many of the ways Christie’s overseer superintendent, Cami Anderson, squandered a lot of Zuckerberg’s money, nearly a quarter of it on expensive consultants. Right after Thanksgiving,  the Education Law Center released a report that clarifies the financial realities for the Newark School District that are harder to patch together from Russakoff’s book.

Mark Zuckerberg’s one-time gift of $100 million to underwrite the Christie-Booker charter school experiment pales compared to what the Education Law Center’s new report explains is a $132 million shortfall in state funding for the current school year due to Governor Chris Christie’s refusal to fund the state’s court-ordered school finance plan: “Newark last received the increases required by New Jersey’s school funding formula—the School Funding Reform Act… in 2011-12, when the State Supreme Court ordered Governor Christie to restore the $42 million cut from Newark’s budget in 2010.  Since then, the Governor has refused to fund the formula, resulting in an over $132 million shortfall in state aid to Newark Public Schools in 2015-2016.”

Complicating Newark Public Schools’ problems has been the rapid expansion of charter Gov. Christie and Legislature Fail to Fund School Formula, Create Crisis for Newark’s Schools | janresseger:

Here Come the Public-School Consultants - The Atlantic

Here Come the Public-School Consultants - The Atlantic:

Here Come the Public-School Consultants

Many urban systems are so confusing—and so unequal—that some parents are hiring private experts to help them figure out where to send their kids.

“This school would be more of a safety,” Joyce Szuflita explained to the parents. She gestured at the colored paper handouts fanned out between them, and then pointed at another zoned school on a different sheet. “That’s a curated class of parents because they chose to move into the zone of the school that they wanted,” said Szuflita. “So, you don't have to have G&T if you have that," she added, referring to gifted-and-talented programs.

It was early morning at a diner in Brooklyn’s South Slope neighborhood, and the couple had contacted Szuflita for advice. The couple—an academic and a public-health researcher—was moving from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to New York City and was nervous about the schooling of their two-year-old and their not-yet-born child. They knew that securing a spot in one of the borough’s handful of coveted high-performing elementary schools was notoriously difficult.

Szuflita, a cheery, graying blonde woman of 56, wore a necklace of heavy, brightly colored beads, provided soothing information and swift judgments, and directed the couple through the city’s byzantine public system with precision. There were so many questions at sessions like these: zoned or lottery admissions? Regular public or charters? Which schools have families like yours? Which ones have room for kids who live in another zone? What’s most effective in getting a child off a waiting list and into a seat? These parents, as well as those I had observed during one of Szuflita’s frequent public speeches, hung on her answers as if she were a cult leader.

Szuflita is a public-school consultant. Her clientele consists mostly of college-educated professionals who are trying to balance their hopes for their children with the challenges of raising a family in one of the country’s most expensive cities. (She also consults on private schools.) A meeting like the one I observed in a Park Slope diner over iced coffee, hash browns, and a small pile of district maps can cost $400 to $550. (Fifteen minutes on the phone with her is $50.)Here Come the Public-School Consultants - The Atlantic:

One way to boost achievement among poor kids? Make sure they have classmates who aren’t poor. - The Washington Post

One way to boost achievement among poor kids? Make sure they have classmates who aren’t poor. - The Washington Post:

One way to boost achievement among poor kids? Make sure they have classmates who aren’t poor.

Protesters get up and shout ‘hey, hey, ho, ho, resegregation has to go’ after the Wake County, N.C. school board voted in 2010 to end the county’s diversity-based assignment policy. (Photo by Ethan Hyman/News Observer)

Race-based school integration plans helped boost black students’ achievement after Brown v. Board of Education, but those plans fell out of favor in recent decades as districts persuaded courts that they had moved beyond their separate-but-equal past.

The result in many places? A system of resegregated schools.

But in a small number of school districts, officials are trying a different approach, assigning children to school based in part on their family’s income. And when poor kids mix with richer kids in class, they tend to do better academically, especially in math, according to a new study of large North Carolina school districts that was published in the journal Urban Education.

The researchers examined Wake County, the only one of North Carolina’s largest districts that replaced its race-based school assignment plan with an effort to integrate schools by family income. The move caused a furor in Wake County, where voters ousted some school board members because of the plan.

“I was curious as to whether it had much of an effect, since people were so upset about it,” said William A. Darity Jr., a professor at Duke University and co-author of the study. “Our answer is: It doesn’t do as well as the race-based plan in terms of producing higher levels of diversity. But it does appear to have some benefit for student performance.”

[GOP school board backed by tea party conservatives abolishes integration policy]

Adopted in 2000, the plan said that no more than 40 percent of children in a school should be low-income, as measured by free lunch eligibility, and no more than 25 percent should be performing below grade level on state tests.

The state’s other four largest districts were less aggressive about trying to maintain diversity. Generally, they assigned children to schools based on their One way to boost achievement among poor kids? Make sure they have classmates who aren’t poor. - The Washington Post:

What Happened to Education Strategies that Promoted "Community-Centered Pedagogy?" - LA Progressive

What Happened to Education Strategies that Promoted "Community-Centered Pedagogy?" - LA Progressive:

What Happened to Education Strategies that Promoted “Community-Centered Pedagogy?”

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, responding to a wave of violence sweeping through urban America, educators of color began proposing that public schools transform their pedagogy to enhance the self esteem and historical understanding of young people in the hardest hit communities. They called for the transformation of social studies curricula to incorporate more Black and Latino history, for the creation of new public schools in which Black and Latino history were integral parts of the school culture, for the development of strategies to recruit more Black and Latino teachers, especially from communities that were most at risk.

There was a tremendous amount of energy and idealism accompanying this vision of Urban Education, and controversy as well. Supporters claimed these measure were necessary to save a generation of youth at risk; critics claimed they would intensify racial divisions, promote hostility to white teachers and administrators and, in the most extreme cases, undermine patriotism and national unity.

Fierce debates about such strategies occurred all through the 90s, but by the time George W Bush had taken office, the critics had largely won the day. When No Child Left Behind was passed, its architects decided to base their vision of compliance and equity entirely on conformity to National Standards, which allowed little if any adaptation to community traditions. The same approach was incorporated, in even more restrictive form, by
Barack Obama’s “Race to the Top,” which called for mandatory closing of schools that did not perform well on standardized tests as a condition for receiving federal grants. Not only were inner city schools not rewarded or honored for adapting pedagogy to the cultural traditions of the communities they were located in, they were penalized for doing so if their efforts did not raise scores on standardized tests.

The rise of “standardization” as the centerpiece of national education policy had a powerful impact on the charter school movement, which in its early stages had proponents who tried to create What Happened to Education Strategies that Promoted "Community-Centered Pedagogy?" - LA Progressive:

Minneapolis selects Massachusetts candidate as school superintendent | Minnesota Public Radio News

Minneapolis selects Massachusetts candidate as school superintendent | Minnesota Public Radio Minneapolis selects Massachusetts candidate as school superintendent

Sergio Paez, 48, will become the next superintendent of Minneapolis Public Schools after winning the support of six of the nine board members. He previously served as the superintendent of Holyoke Public Schools in Massachusetts. Michael Beswick | The Republican 2014

1. LISTEN Story audio

   Dec 8, 2015
   3min 17sec

Updated: Dec. 8, 9:47 a.m. | Posted: Dec. 7, 8:46 p.m.

The Minneapolis Board of Education has picked a Massachusetts candidate as the next superintendent of Minneapolis Public Schools.

After a nearly 10-month search, the board on Monday selected Sergio Paez. He won the support of six of the nine board members.

• Listen: Paez discusses his goals for Minneapolis schools

"We need someone that can come into our district and show that commitment as well as demonstrate bringing our community together, rebuilding trust and continuing the work that has already begun here," said Board Member Tracine Asberry.

Paez says he will focus on addressing the achievement gap between whites and students of color, and making sure students are safe in schools.

"Safety and the well-being of our students, our teachers and the community is paramount. If students are not ready to learn because of trauma issues, social/emotional issues or safety issues, learning won't happen," he said in an interview with MPR News' Phil Picardi. "So it is a top priority for me to ensure that happens in every single environment."

Paez, 48, will come to Minneapolis from Holyoke Public Schools in Massachusetts, where he served as superintendent from 2013-15. The district — with 11 schools and 5,600 students — is far smaller than Minneapolis, which has about 35,000 students. Previously, he was an assistant superintendent for Worcester Public Schools.

Paez will replace interim Superintendent Michael Goar, who has been leading the district since previous Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson resigned in January.

He left the Holyoke job last summer amid a state takeover of the district, which the Massachusetts board of education declared "chronically under-performing." Its graduation rate was 60 percent in 2014, and it's facing a $3 million deficit.

Paez will face similar challenges in Minneapolis, where the school system is dealing with about the same graduation rate, according to district stats, and a stubborn achievement gap between white students and those of color.

Minneapolis School Board member Carla Bates was one of the three members who did not vote for Paez. At Monday night's meeting she pointed out that his Massachusetts district is largely Hispanic, with African-Americans making up just Minneapolis selects Massachusetts candidate as school superintendent | Minnesota Public Radio 

TeachingWorks (or Doesn’t) at the University of Michigan: The Corporatization of Teacher Education

TeachingWorks (or Doesn’t) at the University of Michigan: The Corporatization of Teacher Education:

TeachingWorks (or Doesn’t) at the University of Michigan: The Corporatization of Teacher Education

It is with concern that I write about the Gates influence on the University of Michigan’s College of Education and the new program called TeachingWorks. The Gates Foundation is giving $6.8 million to the U of M to influence how they will transform teacher preparation. The Helmsley Charitable Trust Grant also provided $1.1 million. This program will affect how teachers are made in universities across the country.

Valerie Strauss had an interesting piece by Kenneth Zeichner, a professor in teacher education at the University of Washington at Seattle, indicating that the new Every Student Succeeds Act has provisions to primarily support non-traditional, non-university programs such as those funded by venture philanthropists.Many of us see these programs rapidly popping up in colleges and school districts near where we live.

Both parents and educators should be concerned about TeachingWorks. It is taking place in a major university that once had a dynamic teacher education program, it focuses on novices, and it will affect the kind of teachers children will get for years to come.

They are using the worn out excuse that teachers are retiring, so they have to make teachers fast, but there has been a push by groups like The New Teacher Project, and others, to drive veteran teachers out of the classroom for years.

TeachingWorks is dancing the cha cha with Teach for America, Teach First (England) and the Relay Graduate School of Education, to name a few, claiming TeachingWorks (or Doesn’t) at the University of Michigan: The Corporatization of Teacher Education:

John Thompson: Why Raj Chetty Is Wrong | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson: Why Raj Chetty Is Wrong | Diane Ravitch's blog:

John Thompson: Why Raj Chetty Is Wrong

John Thompson, historian and teacher in Oklahoma, has reviewed the work of economists Raj Chetty. You may recall that Chetty, a Harvard professor, was co-author of a study that purported to show that teachers could be evaluated by the test scores of their students. An effective teacher, one who raised test scores, would raise lifetime income, increase high school graduation rates, prevent teen pregnancies, and have lifelong effects on students. Raj and his colleagues John Friedman and Jonah Rockoff were cited on the first page of the New York Times(before the study was peer-reviewed), appeared on the PBS NewsHour, and were hailed by President Obama in his State of the Union speech in 2012. Their study became the #1 talking point for those who thought that using test scores–their rise and fall–would be the best way to identify effective and ineffective teachers. As Professor Friedman told the New York Times, “The message is to fire people sooner rather than later.”

Critics thought the findings were fairly modest. Even the Times said:

The average effect of one teacher on a single student is modest. All else equal, a student with one excellent teacher for one year between fourth and eighth grade would gain $4,600 in lifetime income, compared to a student of similar demographics who has an average teacher. The student with the excellent teacher would also be 0.5 percent more likely to attend college.

That works out to about $105 a year for a 40-year career, or $2 a week. But the Times then looked at the results in the aggregate and calculated that the aggregate of gains for an entire class would be $266,000 over the lifetimes of the entire class, or millions of dollars in added income when multiplied by millions of classrooms. Pretty great stuff, even though it means only $2 a week for one student.

The Obama administration bought into the Chetty-Friedman-Rockoff thesis whole-heartedly. Fire teachers sooner rather than later. Use test scores to find out who is a great teacher, who is a rotten teacher. It all made sense, except that it didn’t work anywhere. The scores bounced around. A teacher who was great one year was ineffective the next year; and vice versa. Teachers were rated based on the scores of students they never taught. Tests became the goal of education rather than the measure. It was a plague of madness that overcame public education across the land, embedded in Race to the Top (2009) and certified by Ivy League professors.

Thompson writes:

As it becomes more clear that value-added teacher evaluations are headed for the scrap heap of history, true believers in corporate reform continue to respond with the same old soundbites on the ways that their statistical models (VAMs) can be valid and reliable under research John Thompson: Why Raj Chetty Is Wrong | Diane Ravitch's blog:

L.A. school board holds its first interview for job of superintendent - LA Times

L.A. school board holds its first interview for job of superintendent - LA Times:

L.A. school board to hold second round of interviews for superintendent

L.A. schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines, left, confers with school board president Steve Zimmer at district headquarters. The board on Sunday interviewed one or more candidates to replace Cortines, who wants to retire at the end of the year.

 (Bob Chamberlin / Los Angeles Times)

The Los Angeles Board of Education on Tuesday will begin its second interview session with candidates seeking the job of superintendent for the nation’s second-largest school system.

The closed-door meeting is scheduled to begin at 8 a.m. And board members also could conduct interviews — or a discussion about the potential leader — at the end of the day, after two unrelated meetings are held to handle other business.

“The board is approaching this with both the intensity and the focus that a decision that stands to affect so many children mandates,” board President Steve Zimmer said Sunday.

The first interview session took place Sunday, and if it is any guide, the public will learn little from these meetings until the board makes its choice.

Except for brief periods to open and close the meeting, the entire gathering took place out of public view, and no announcement was made at the conclusion.

About seven candidates initially are being considered from a pool of more than 100 brought forward by a search firm; their names have not been released.

Besides taking place Sunday, the most unusual aspect of the first meeting was that, after beginning in open session for one minute, board members then moved to the 63rd floor of the U.S. Bank Tower to conduct interviews.

Zimmer declined to say why the closed session moved to another location. But observers speculated that the purpose was to frustrate any effort to spot applicants on their way in or out of district headquarters, which is practically deserted over the weekend.

After meeting for eight hours in private, board members returned to headquarters, reconvened in open session and adjourned. Board members also have set aside time next Sunday and on several other days this month.L.A. school board holds its first interview for job of superintendent - LA Times:

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Raising Status of Profession Critical in Recruiting Teachers of Color - NEA Today

Raising Status of Profession Critical in Recruiting Teachers of Color - NEA Today:

Raising Status of Profession Critical in Recruiting Teachers of Color

Tiffany McClary attended Palm Beach County, Florida public schools from grade school to high school. She excelled, but McClary who is black, says she never really felt like she belonged.

Today, McClary,  a senior elementary education major at Florida A&M University (FAMU), says her Historically Black University makes her feel right at home. “After experiencing four years at Florida A&M University, and being taught by many teachers of color, I must say it feels better to be taught by your own,” McClary adds.

That’s an experience a growing number of students of color in the nation’s public schools don’t have and may never know. That’s because students of color make up almost half of the public school population, but teachers of color represent just 18 percent of the profession.

Recent data from the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education point to a small pool of future educators of color in the pipeline: of the bachelor’s degrees awarded in 2013-2014, Black teacher candidates earned just 5 percent and Hispanic candidates 6 percent.

But if public schools are  going to keep pace and meet the needs of the rising population of minority students, they will  need to recruit more high-quality minority educators. Who teaches students of color matters, the research shows. When students have teachers who look like them and are more culturally responsive to their needs, they benefit academically and in other ways, too—they have fewer instances of absenteeism, suspension and expulsion, and higher test scores, levels of engagement, advanced-level course enrollment, graduation rates, and college enrollment. Also, teachers of color are more likely to work in urban and high-poverty schools and often feel it’s an important responsibility to fulfill.

As districts nationwide struggle to recruit teachers for underserved populations and for harder to fill teaching positions in math, science, and special education, (HBCUs and other minority serving institutions can be important resources. But understanding why more college and high school students aren’t drawn to the teaching profession in the first place, may be the first step.

Elizabeth Davenport, Ph.D., J.D., a FAMU College of Education professor, points to several reasons more students of color aren’t joining the ranks of educators. Their own negative school experiences are among them.

When North Carolina A&T researchers surveyed  high-achieving, African-American Raising Status of Profession Critical in Recruiting Teachers of Color - NEA Today: