Thursday, June 2, 2011

LAUSD, Teaching, And The Road To Extinction by Mark Hemphill - Perdaily.com

LAUSD, Teaching, And The Road To Extinction by Mark Hemphill (LAUSD, la enseñanza, y camino a la extinción por Mark Hemphill) - Perdaily.com

LAUSD, Teaching, And The Road To Extinction by Mark Hemphill (LAUSD, la enseñanza, y camino a la extinción por Mark Hemphill)

by Leonard Isenberg

(Mensaje se repite en Español)

(For a national view of public education reform see the end of this blog post)

The lost city of Petra in modern day Jordan, which was popularized in Spielberg-Lucas classic film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was inhabited from 7000 B.C., before fading into oblivion. The vibrant society of Easter Island, off the coast of South America, also built a flourishing civilization made famous by massive stone faces that remain to this day starring out to sea long after this civilization responsible for them disappeared. The Mayan culture of Southern Mexico and Central America also thrived from 2000 B.C. until 900 A.D. and then, like its predecessors went into decline and irrelevance. In all these civilizations, what brought them down was a failure to adapt and a total disregard for the exigencies demanded by their changing environment. With a public education system at the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) that harkens back to the failed pseudo-science of Social Darwinism from which it defined itself and the

For-Profit Higher Ed Sector Relieved Education Secretary Duncan: "We need this sector to succeed. - Forbes

For-Profit Higher Ed Sector Relieved About Government Rule - Susan Adams - Getting Ahead - Forbes

Jun. 2 2011 - 4:04 pm | 465 views | 0 recommendations | 2 comments

WASHINGTON - MARCH 1: Secretary of Education ...

Education Secretary Duncan: "We need this sector to succeed."

The $23 billion for-profit higher education business got a boost yesterday when the U.S. Department of Education finally released the most controversial of its new rules aimed at regulating the sector. The rule, known as “gainful employment,” would cut off federal financial aid for programs whose students don’t wind up earning enough to pay back their loans. Jeffrey Silber, a senior analyst at BMO Capital Markets, says for-profit educators are “relieved” at the rule’s final version.

When adults are the bullies | Connected Principals

When adults are the bullies

by Chris Wejr

Image from Amy Loves Yah http://bit.ly/mxB07y

Across the world, educators are more and more finding themselves involved in bullying and not just through their students, but rather actively bullying others or being a victim of it. What do we, as administrators and adults, do when the bullying taking place is among the adults in the school/district? I remember starting out as a teacher and being quite shocked by the cliques, hierarchies, and power structures within staffs of schools.

I recently had a heart-felt discussion with a teacher that has gone through a very difficult experience. This teacher had to write the story with her identity hidden because of the effect it could have on her career and day-

4LAKids - some of the news that doesn't fit: WESTCHESTER HIGH STUDENTS WALK OUT - Apparently to protest conversion of school to magnet [Updated]

WESTCHESTER HIGH STUDENTS WALK OUT - Apparently to protest conversion of school to magnet [Updated]

BY HOWARD BLUME, LA TIMES/LA NOW | HTTP://LAT.MS/JF2OQY

Source: California Department of Education / Sandra Poindexter, Ben Welsh Los Angeles Times

Westchester Senior High

7400 West Manchester Ave., Los Angeles, 90045

Public school in the Los Angeles Unified district.
Grades 9-12
1,812 students
87 faculty members

June 1, 2011 | 1:04 pm - At least 400 students walked out of class at Westchester High School on Wednesday morning. Los Angeles school district officials said the walkout began at 10:30 a.m. and was initiated by current magnet-school students at Westchester. The protest was still continuing nearly two hours later.

District officials said students were protesting the planned conversion of the neighborhood school to be entirely a magnet program. Currently, just a portion of the school is a magnet.

Some faculty members and students have been concerned that neighborhood students could be crowded out of the school if enrollment were based on a magnet-school

MIDNIGHT RIDE TO SACRAMENTO: School workers will board buses to capital to urge legislators to maintain tax revenues to stop budget cuts to education!

4LAKids - some of the news that doesn't fit: MIDNIGHT RIDE TO SACRAMENTO: School workers will board buses to capital to urge legislators to maintain tax revenues to stop budget cuts to education!

MIDNIGHT RIDE TO SACRAMENTO: School workers will board buses to capital to urge legislators to maintain tax revenues to stop budget cuts to education!

SEIU LOCAL 99 PRESS RELEASE (FROM THE BILOXI, GULFPORT & SOUTH MISSISSIPPI SUN-HERALD) | HTTP://BIT.LY/MKD7VH

LOS ANGELES, June 2, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The following release is being issued by SEIU Local 99:

WHAT: Just days before California's June 15 budget deadline, cafeteria workers, classroom aides, school janitors, child care providers and community college employees will rally, board a convoy of buses and travel all night to Sacramento to urge legislators to support existing tax revenues to stop even more cuts to education.

WHY: Over the past three years $20 billion has been cut from California's schools and community colleges, severely impacting student programs and services. And tens of thousands of young children have been impacted by more than $1 billion in cuts to child care during the last couple of years.

Education workers will spend all day Tuesday, June 7, visiting legislators and urging them to support Governor Brown's proposal to repay schools money owed under Proposition 98 and voting to maintain existing tax revenues.

Under Governor Brown's "May Revise" budget proposal, K-12 schools and community colleges would receive $3 billion of the $6.6 billion in increased state revenue. For

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: 'Make my school a prison' pleads Michigan superintendent

'Make my school a prison' pleads Michigan superintendent

by Mike Klonsky

The school-to-prison pipeline

Nathan Bootz, Superintendent of Ithaca Public Schools asks Michigan's Tea Party Gov. Snyder to make his school a prison so it can be adequately funded.

The State of Michigan spends annually somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000 per prisoner, yet we are struggling to provide schools with $7,000 per student. I guess we need to treat our students like they are prisoners, with equal funding. Please give my students three meals a day. Please give my children access to free health care. Please provide my school district Internet access and computers. Please put books in my library. Please give my students a weight room so we can be big and strong. We provide all of these things to prisoners because they have constitutional rights. What about the rights of youth, our future?! -- Gratiot County Herald

Bootz' letter to the editor was also picked up by Campaign for America's Future blogger Jeff Bryant, who posts

Here's to Our Schools! SOS Videos go Viral - Living in Dialogue - Education Week Teacher

Here's to Our Schools! SOS Videos go Viral

by Anthony Cody

The fourth and final video in our special series of Save Our Schools video spots has been released. We do not have a big budget - just a lot of heart. So when we wanted to share some positive messages about why we are marching this summer, we went to YOU, to ask for images and video footage to help show how we are supporting students, parents, teachers and schools, and build awareness of the Save Our Schools March this coming July 30th. The amazing Tom and Amy Valens, who produced the documentary "August to June," have crafted these images into these videos. Please watch the latest: "Here's to Our Schools!"

If we had millions of dollars, we would pay for these videos to be broadcast far and wide. But we only have

Hechinger Report | For-profit universities: By the numbers

For-profit universities: By the numbers

by Sarah Garland

Just how well do students who attend five of the largest, most well-known for-profit schools in the U.S. do when it comes to repaying their loans? The Hechinger Report decided to take a closer look following the release of new federal rules meant to police institutions that critics contend take advantage of poor and unprepared students.

Under the new rules, which go into effect in 2015, if alumni aren’t able to obtain “gainful employment”—jobs that allow them to repay their student loans—institutions can lose their federal aid. To ensure that schools comply, the U.S. Department of Education will track whether students get jobs with salaries high enough to repay their loans.

For-profits have fought the new rules vigorously, arguing that they fill a necessary role by educating students whom other schools won’t take or don’t have room for.

More coverage

Visit our special section on for-profit colleges

Which institutions meet the bar won’t be known for some time; institutions are required to start collecting

Teachers, Nurses, and Medical Care in California Schools « InterACT

Teachers, Nurses, and Medical Care in California Schools

by David B. Cohen

In California, we have a school staffing problem. By many measures, we are the worst in the nation when it comes to putting enough people in place to do the jobs we expect of our schools and districts. With school nurses, the ratios are far too low to meet needs, but the potential consequences for some students are more immediate and more dire.

The federal government has inserted itself into a state legal battle over a law that would press non-nurse staff members into job duties currently delegated to school nurses. Here’s the opening of an article from The San Francisco Chronicle (“Obama administration steps into insulin shot fight” – May 30, 2011).

The Obama administration has stepped into a California case involving 14,000 diabetic schoolchildren, urging the state’s top court to let school employees give insulin shots if no nurses are available.
Two lower courts have ruled that California law allows only licensed doctors and nurses to

Timothy D. Slekar: Pennsylvania: 'Selectively Dismantling' Public Education

by Timothy D. Slekar

When they were recently asked whether the current administration is seeking to privatize public education, a couple of PA State Senators used the term "selective dismantling" in discussions with school board members and superintendents in Delaware County.

In my last two blogs, I have used Pennsylvania as a case study to help illustrate how market-based reformers are trying to destroy our community-based public school system by pushing voucher bills that will divert money from public schools to private schools (Remember, Pennsylvania is not unique. Look at Florida, Wisconsin,Ohio, New Jersey, Michigan, and Indiana. Same tactics, different state.).

I have also taken on the role of community activist by trying to spread the word that the Corbett administration has no intentions of reducing the state deficit through education cuts. Corbett actually plans on spending more money for vouchers and other market-based reforms. I have repeatedly sent letters and requests for local media coverage (newspaper, TV News). According to the local TV media, they don't do stories, they "cover stories." I have also sent "letters to the editor" to my local paper. All of the letters seem to have gone into cyber oblivion.

I have been sending literature to Senator Robert Casey's staff (I met with his team in March and they asked that I

ASCD Inservice: No Christmas in July for Duncan

No Christmas in July for Duncan

Reality hasn't yet caught up with Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who implored Congress this week to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) before the beginning of the next school year. Aside from the sheer impracticality of enacting a comprehensive education reform law in two months, how wise is rushing such an influential law? Didn't we try the same with NCLB in 2001 (which still took a whole year to enact), leading to many of the law's unexamined and unintended consequences?

And then there is the politics of the matter. Duncan made his case while in Minnesota at the invitation of Sen. Al Franken (D-MN), but his remarks were made in the relative backyard of House Education Committee Chairman John Kline (R-MN). Kline, at least, has passed an ESEA reauthorization bill—albeit one of his

NYC Public School Parents: Update! Rally and hearings about the mayor's devastating cuts to our kids

Update! Rally and hearings about the mayor's devastating cuts to our kids

by Leonie Haimson

There was a rousing rally at City Hall yesterday morning, with parents and elected officials standing up for our kids and against the mayor’s ruthless and devastating cuts to our schools – and our kids.

The actress Kristin Johnston made a great speech, saying that she has had a long love affair with NYC ever since she moved here more than ten years ago, but that Bloomberg’s budget cuts threatened to kill that love, and his legacy. “Is this really the message you want to give to the kids? Your education doesn’t matter?" She said that the citizens of NYC would fight back, and win: “I only have two words for you: Cathie Black!” (Photo at right from DNA info of Johnston, in back of the banner made by the

Community College Spotlight | A compromise on ‘gainful employment’

A compromise on ‘gainful employment’

Compromises tend to please nobody: Critics of for-profit higher education say the Education Department’s “gainful employment” rule, announced yesterday, is too weak, while the industry complains it unfairly cuts off access to student loans.

Under the new regulation (pdf), career training programs will have to show that at least 35 percent of former students are repaying their loans (reducing the loan balance by at least $1 a year) or that the typical graduate’s annual loan payment does not exceed 30 percent of discretionary income or that the typical grad’s payment does not exceed 12 percent of total earnings.

“We’re asking companies that get up to 90 percent of their profits from taxpayer dollars to be at least 35 percent effective,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan said.

Career colleges will get more time to comply: Those that miss the targets in the first year must report the data and write an improvement plan. After two years, they must warn students of high debt to

'We're Eventually Irrepressible' - Bridging Differences - Education Week

'We're Eventually Irrepressible'

by Deborah Meier

Dear Diane,

One familiar definition of a revolution is that it involves a dramatic shift in WHO has power. In general, power begets power while powerlessness too often stupefies.

We are almost all victims of myths that intensify the divisions of power. Examples:
The myth that the Left controls the media, that union bosses are all-powerful (and rich), that we spend too much money on x vs. y (confusing millions with billions or trillions), and the power of teachers' union bosses to dictate contracts and get their way. It gets to seem reasonable even if it is pure nonsense. We can resist these myths, but this can be a mixed blessing. Many kids I know resist knowledge because of who and how it is offered.

Some of our readers were distressed at my hostility toward wealth and power. In fact, they have a point. It is in part sheer envy. In part, it is an inherited trait. In part, it is a product of the career I chose. In part, it is rational.

Andrew Carnegie did a lot of good with free libraries. If I had not become a teacher, maybe I would have become

Appeals court backs NYC over keeping religious services out of public schools

BY SCOTT SHIFREL
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Thursday, June 2nd 2011, 3:20 PM

Michael Schwartz for News

An appeals court denied an evangelical group's lawsuit to allow religious services inside a Bronx school.

TAKE OUR POLL

Let us pray... or not!

Do you believe in the seperation of church and state?

RELATED NEWS

The city can keep religious services out of its schools, an appeals court ruled Thursday.

In a case involving a Bronx school and an evangelical group, a Manhattan court lifted a ban that stopped the city from booting "worship services" out of public schools.

The judges would, however, allow religious groups to teach, pray and conduct other activities.

"It is reasonable for the Board (of Education) to fear ...allowing schools to be converted into churches," the court said in its decision.

"The Board's concern that it would be substantially subsidizing churches if it opened schools for religious worship services is reasonable."

The case stems from a battle between the Bronx Household of Faith's quest to use PS 15 in the University Heights section of

News and Views | Seattle Education

News and Views

Posted on June 2, 2011 by seattleducation2011| Leave a comment

First up, the Save Our Schools March and Rally in July:

Save Our Schools March & National Call to Action!

July 28-31, 2011 in Washington, D.C. and around the country

We’re putting the Public back in public schools!

We, a collection of people from all walks of life and every corner of this nation, embody a mixture of ideas and opinions regarding how we can improve educational opportunities for all children. We stand united by one belief – it’s time for teachers and parents to organize and reclaim control of our schools.
As concerned citizens, we demand an end to the destructive policies and rhetoric that have eroded confidence in our public schools, demoralized teachers, and reduced the education of too many of our children to nothing more than test preparation.
A well-educated society is essential to the future of the United States of America. Our students must have access to a fully funded, world-class public education system, and it is our responsibility to hold our government accountable for providing the means to achieve it. Please join us!
July 30: DC Rally & March
The rally will officially begin at noon at the Ellipse, but arrive early to enjoy performances, art, and more!
At noon, Diane Ravitch, Jonathan Kozol, José Vilson, Deborah Meier, Monty Neill, Angela Valenzuela, and other speakers, musicians, performance poets, and more will encourage, educate, and support this movement and the Save Our Schools March demands.
At two p.m., we will march to the Department of Education, where the demands will be read, we’ll chant, and engage in a call forcontinued action to reclaim schools as places of learning, joy, and democracy.

Parents Across America is one of many organizations sponsoring this march and rally.

Next up, another great post by Jim Horn, National Curriculum and National Testing. A recommended read. Here are the first two paragraphs:

	Yes, it's important for public schools to remain secular.
	No, religion is important in students' lives.
	Only in a few specific cases.
	I'm not sure.

Latest News and Comment from Education

Thursday, June 2, 2011

For-Profit Higher Ed Sector Relieved About Government Rule

WESTCHESTER HIGH STUDENTS WALK OUT - Apparently to protest conversion of school to magnet [Updated]

BY HOWARD BLUME, LA TIMES/LA NOW | HTTP://LAT.MS/JF2OQY

MIDNIGHT RIDE TO SACRAMENTO: School workers will board buses to capital to urge legislators to maintain tax revenues to stop budget cuts to education!

SEIU LOCAL 99 PRESS RELEASE (FROM THE BILOXI, GULFPORT & SOUTH MISSISSIPPI SUN-HERALD) | HTTP://BIT.LY/MKD7VH

More coverage

No Christmas in July for Duncan

A compromise on ‘gainful employment’

Appeals court backs NYC over keeping religious services out of public schools

TAKE OUR POLL

Let us pray... or not!

RELATED NEWS

News and Views