Sunday, October 3, 2010

North Mac board, teachers union put information on talks online - Springfield, IL - The State Journal-Register

North Mac board, teachers union put information on talks online

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By Staff Report

THE STATE JOURNAL-REGISTER

Posted Oct 02, 2010 @ 07:35 PM

Last update Oct 03, 2010 @ 06:18 AM

GIRARD - The North Mac school board and the union representing North Mac teachers and support staff have information about contract talks on their respective web sites: www.northmachools.org andwww.thenmea.org.

Federal-mediated contract talks between the union and school board are scheduled to resume at 1 p.m. Sunday, with health insurance said to be the main sticking point.

The local membership will meet following the contract talks to decide what it wants to do next, according to Jerry Harrison, field representative for the Illinois Education Association.
The union filed an intent-to-strike notice last month.

On its web site, the North Mac Education Association says teachers and support staff were informed by e-mail Friday that they were to turn in their keys that day.

Because of the possibility of a strike starting Monday, the district lawyer advised that keys be turned in Friday,

Brown, Whitman clash on immigration, education in first-ever Spanish-language debate – California Beat

Brown, Whitman clash on immigration, education in first-ever Spanish-language debate

BY STEVEN LUO OCTOBER 2, 2010 NO COMMENTS PRINT SHARE

TAGS: 2010, DEBATE, ELECTION, FRESNO, FRESNO STATE UNIVERSITY, GENERAL ELECTION, GOVERNOR, ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION, IMMIGRATION, JERRY BROWN, MEG WHITMAN, NICANDRA DIAZ, TOP STORY

(10/2) — 20:18 PDT — FRESNO — Sparks flew as Democrat Jerry Brown and Republican Meg Whitman clashed on immigration and education in California’s first ever Spanish-language gubernatorial debate Saturday.

Whitman, embroiled in a controversy over Nicandra Diaz Santillan, an illegal immigrant she employed as a housekeeper from 2000 to 2009, turned away from the audience of more than 500 at California State University Fresno and faced Brown as she told him he should be “ashamed” of putting Diaz at risk of deportation for his own political gain.

But Brown, who denies being involved in the release of the allegations, accused

State Board of Education mulling statewide property tax for charter schools | Deseret News

State Board of Education mulling statewide property tax for charter schools

Published: Saturday, Oct. 2, 2010 1:28 a.m. MDT

By Molly Farmer, Deseret News

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SALT LAKE CITY — The State Board of Education is considering different methods to better "equalize" education funding across Utah, including a statewide property tax to fund charter schools.

Board member David Thomas, who supports the levy, said charter schools are public schools and shouldn't be treated differently.

"They should have the same kind of funding source," he said. "It should work the exact same way, which means a small levy, statewide, to support charter schools."

Currently, charter schools can't impose taxes. Local school

Government fails poor kids - Other Views - MiamiHerald.com

Government fails poor kids

BY CAL THOMAS

TMSEDITORS@TRIBUNE.COM

The new film Waiting for Superman by documentary filmmaker Davis Guggenheim, director of An Inconvenient Truth, should be mandatory viewing for every member of Congress.

As a synopsis on the Fandango movie site says, this film ``explores the tragic ways in which the American public education system is failing our nation's children . . . ''

Not only do we see children and their parents on the edge of their seats during a lottery that will determine who gets the educational equivalent of a ``get out of jail free'' card, we also watch the crestfallen faces of those who don't draw the magic numbers for decent schools, a better education and, thus, a hope for the future. Is this how a poor child's destiny should be decided, by lottery ?

Democurmudgeon: Why American Education is on the Ropes. Poverty.

Why American Education is on the Ropes. Poverty.

by Democurmudgeon

An article about poverty in Janesville, Wisconsin made it perfectly clear how it effects our kid’s education. It’s the root cause of low achievement and graduation rates. Poverty controls their lives.
StateJournal: Rock County is scrambling to help two groups of needy children - those who were born into poor families and those who fell from the middle class when the Janesville GM plant closed in December 2008 … Rock with the second worst child-poverty rate in the state … The Janesville Public School District is seeing more students coming to class hungry, without a good night's sleep and distracted by the stress of living in need, said Ann Forbeck, school district

Parents: Impasse hurting students - The Boston Globe

Parents: Impasse hurting students

Teachers withhold key help, they say

By Rachel Lebeaux

Globe Correspondent / October 3, 2010

Text size – +

Parents of King Philip Regional High School students are steamed at its teachers, saying the union’s means of protesting its drawn-out contract dispute with the district are hurting their children’s studies and their college plans.

They report that many teachers are refusing to write personal recommendation letters for students who are applying to colleges, issuing form-letter recommendations instead. They also say that many teachers have canceled independent study courses, offered mostly to upperclassmen, forcing the students into study halls or to look outside the system for similar instruction this fall.

And, they say, many teachers are not entering grades, homework assignments,

What Do Corporate Earnings Reports and School Test Scores Have in Common? � Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

What Do Corporate Earnings Reports and School Test Scores Have in Common?

by larrycuban

The answer is that intense pressures upon corporate executives to satisfy investors and upon school leaders to raise test scores distort routine practices and too often leads to chicanery. Over the last decade, stories have emerged from multi-billion dollar corporate offices that CEOs doctored earnings reports to keep investors happy (while protecting their stock options), and educators fiddled with standardized test scores.

Before the 2008 financial meltdown, earnings statements (and forecasts) as signs of corporate success pushed corporate officers to claim as earnings funds that had little to do with actual transactions with customers in a given year. For example, Computer Associates and Xerox CEOs claimed revenues in one year that their

Score two for the forces against democracy | Reflections on Teaching

Score two for the forces against democracy

by alicemercer

Since I’m in the middle of a school reform first-hand, I haven’t had time to keep up with all the edu-reformy news that’s been coming out at hyper-speed the last week. Just look up school reform on Larry Ferlazzo’s blog for a list of the latest and greatest posts. My big picture impression is truth may have been the first victim in a lot of what’s been going down, but we’re moving beyond that to the point where basic things like democracy and rule of law are getting thrown out the window as so-called reformers continue to push their agendas. I’m getting Tom’s point that it is feeling like things are hitting a critical juncture. Here are two examples, little and big, of that:

I bring you news from Providence, Rhode Island via Tom Hoffman’s Tuttle SVC blog:

Linda Borg for the ProJo:

PROVIDENCE — Hope High School students said their fears have come true: Hope is no longer a

Down the Education Rabbit Hole � InterACT

Down the Education Rabbit Hole

by David B. Cohen

“…but Alice had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way.”

Lewis Carrol - Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

I guess I’m not as adaptable as Alice. It’s only the end of Chapter One when she realizes that once she’s hit the bottom of the rabbit hole, nothing will “go on in the common way.” Much of the education reform debate has been down the rabbit hole for a while, but I keep expecting people to act with some common sense.

Apparently, I’m clinging to a strange notion about education: if you want to improve schools, you need teacher

Queens Teacher: Rheeform Has Its Consequences

Rheeform Has Its Consequences

by Queens Teacher

The canary in the education reform movement's coal mine

All teachers throughout the country need to rejoice with the recent Washington, D.C., mayoral primary as the all-but-official new Democratic mayor elect, Vincent Gray, will most likely make the firing of Michele Rhee, chancellor of the D.C. schools, one of his highest priorities. Rhee, whose picture recently was on the cover of Time magazine, had fired 240 teachers in Washington, D.C., and will now most likely also join the lines of the unemployed. Rhee had crossed the lines of professionalism when she openly campaigned in the more affluent sections of Georgetown for the outgoing mayor, Adrian Fenty. Following Fenty's defeat, she then put her foot in her mouth when she called the results of the election "devastating." It is also no secret that Gray had criticized

Saturday, October 2, 2010

Is Education The New Subprime? | iStockAnalyst.com

Is Education The New Subprime?

By: Jacob H. Zamansky Saturday, October 02, 2010 11:28 AM

Stop me if you've heard this one before: Publicly traded corporations accused of wrongdoing countering critics by saying they are helping low-income Americans achieve the American dream.

No, this isn't the subprime loan debacle all over again. It's the for-profit higher education industry, which is currently reeling from plummeting stock prices and shareholder unrest due to a government investigation that found potentially fraudulent practices and a need for new regulations.

Indeed, on August 3, 2010, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report which concluded that for-profit educational institutions had "encouraged fraudulent practices" designed to recruit students. The GAO investigated for-profit colleges in Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington, D.C. Recruiters at

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Sunday, October 3, 2010