On Wednesday, Kristin Becker asked her first-graders at Success Academy in San Jose to compose a short essay about what they want to be when they graduate from college -- a goal she has now planted firmly in their heads.
Before the kids delivered their speeches Thursday, Becker gazed at her squirmy charges. There were a lot of missing front teeth in this room. "Yesterday, we decided what our dreams were," she said. "I know that if you work as hard as you did this year, when you graduate from college, you'll get to pick your job."
Then, 7-year-old Kimberly Bruno Gallegos bounced off the floor and softly told the class her dream was to be a teacher. Like Miss Becker.
But Friday is Kristin Becker's last day of school -- maybe forever.
She is one of 20 teachers who received pink slip notices in March from the Franklin-McKinley School District -- one of thousands of teachers across the state whose futures are tied to expected cutbacks to the state education
Check out what's been happening around ASCD:
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Michelle Rhee has taken her first steps onto California's political playing field, establishing a committee to make campaign contributions and hiring a lobbyist.
The former Washington, D.C., schools chancellor -- who founded the StudentsFirst education advocacy group in December -- has hired Sacramento lobbying firm Gonzalez, Quintana & Hunter, according to filings with the secretary of state's office. The firm,
For the twenty-sixth time I watched as the fifth graders paraded out of the building. This year to the tune of something peppy. I didn’t recognize the tune. But you could dance to it and it had a good beat, as they used to say on American Bandstand when I was a kid.
When the fifth graders were gone, I started to do a bad boogie past the fourth graders who all clapped and laughed. Laughing more than clapping. Then I grabbed Linda by the hand and we did a little swing to the accompaniment of more clapping and laughing.
This is when I start saying, “This will be the last time I will …”
My colleagues have already warned me that it will drive them nuts. I should stop now. It is annoying.
Print This PostZero-tolerance rules, once hailed as the panacea to an explosion of serious student misbehavior in schools, are now recognized more and more as part of the problem, not the solution and are being significantly modified or replaced altogether by policies that are “more child-centered,” according to a news article in theWashington Post.
“The tide is beginning to turn,” Matt Cregor, assistant counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, told a Post reporter, “but we have a very long way to go to see these reforms realized for all districts across the country.”
Cregor and other observers say that zero-tolerance policies – which mandate that school officials respond
The target date for a new State Budget is June 15th. In order to stave off even more devastating cuts to schools, public safety and vital programs, we need two Republicans in both the State Senate and Assembly to vote for a new budget that extends current revenues. We cannot allow a small group of Republicans to stop our forward progress to rebuild the California economy.
Phone Bank Times/Locations:
San Mateo Labor Council
Location #1: Labor Council, 1153 Chess Drive, Foster City
Tuesdays, 6/14, 6/21, 6/28, 5:30 – 8:30PM
Location #2: IBEW 617, 1701 Leslie Street, San Mateo
Wednesdays, 6/15, 6/29, 5:30 – 8:30PM
Thursdays 6/23, 5:30 – 8:30PM
Contact: Julie Lind, 650-572-8848 or smclcjulie@sbcglobal.net
South Bay Labor Council
Location: Labor Council, 2102 Almaden Rd. San Jose
Tuesdays, Thursdays (through June 30th), 5:30 – 8:30PM
Contact: Derecka Mehrens, 408-266-3790 ext. 566 or derecka@atwork.org
Sign up at http://www.atwork.org/rsvp
Alameda Labor Council
Location: SEIU-UHW, 60 Thomas L. Berkeley Way, Oakland
Monday & Wednesday, 6/13 and 6/15, 6-8:30PM
Contact: Jean Cohen, 510-632-4242 or jean@alamedalabor.org
Monterey Bay Labor Council
Location: Labor Council, 931 E Market Street, Salinas
Tuesdays, Thursdays (starting 17th) co-sponsored by CSEA, 5:30 – 8:30PM
Wednesdays, co-sponsored by SEIU 1000, 5:30 – 8:30PM
Note: Monday, Friday and Sunday nights are open at the MB CLC office for local unions to adopt
Contact: Glen Schaller, 831-840-5947 or political@mbclc.org
Sacramento Labor Council
Location: Labor Council, 2840 El Centro Road, Suite 111, Sacramento
Sundays – Thursdays, 5:00 – 8:30PM
Contact: Kevin Ferreira, 916-832-3233 or kevfer@sherwest.net
or Bud McKinney, 916-607-0649 or bud137@sbcglobal.net
Fresno-Madera-Tulare-Kings Labor Council
Location #1: SEIU 521, 5228 E. Pine Ave, Fresno
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 5:30-8PM
Contact: Dillon Savory, 559-269-0165 or dsavoryclc@yahoo.com
Location #2: SEIU 521, 1811 Sunnyside Ave., Visalia
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 5:30-8PM
Contact: Adam Urrutia, 559-635-3735
Kern-Inyo-Mono Labor Council
Location: Labor Council, 200 West Jeffery Street, Bakersfield
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 5-7:30pm
Contact: Rob England, 661-364-7101
Tri-Counties Labor Council
Location: Labor Council, 816 Camarillo Springs Road, Ste #G in Camarillo
Tuesday 6/14, 5-8PM
Contact: Marilyn Valenzuela, 805-987-0101 or marewol@aol.com
Orange County Labor Federation
Location: Hometown Buffet, 1008 17th Street, Santa Ana
6/15 and 6/29, 530-8pm
Contact: Jacob Regalado, 619-847-9339 or jregalado@seiu1000.org
San Diego-Imperial Labor Council
Location: Labor Council, 3737 Camino Del Rio South, Suite 403, San Diego
Mondays and Tuesdays, 5-8PM
Contact: Elizabeth Newman, (619) 283-5411 or enewman@unionyes.org
San Bernardino-Riverside Labor Council
Location, date and time TBD
Contact: Laurie Stalnaker, (909) 825-7871 or sbrivclc@earthlink.net
Precinct Walk Times/Locations:
Berryhill SD14/ Berryhill AD26
June 11th, 10-230pm
Location: CSEA River Delta Field Office, 5375 West Lane in Stockton
Contact: Jared Rivera 323.217.3430 jrivera@seiucal.org
Canella SD12/Berrythill AD26
June 11th, 10-230pm
Location: North Valley Labor Federation, 538 McHenry Ave. in Modesto
Contact: Alma Hernandez, 213-359-8070 or ahernandez@seiucal.org
Conway AD 34
June 11th, 9-1pm
Location: SEIU 521, 1811 Sunnyside Ave, Visalia
Contact: Adam Urrutia, 559-635-373
Rick Hess has words of wisdom:
Sigh… Look, Sal Khan is clearly smart as hell, a Renaissance guy, and a terrific teacher. But what he’s done, more or less, is make a bunch of excellent lectures available on YouTube. That’s an excellent development, and a promising platform. In the vernacular of my Education Unbound, it’s a textbook example of a brilliantly executed 1% solution. Where I get lost is why the hype portrays this as so radical and newsworthy. We don’t see medical device makers on TV or in
Kris Amundson sums it up:
Walker’s approve-disapprove rating now stands at 43-53. Kasich faces an even bigger deficit—just 33 percent of Ohio voters approve of his on-the-job performance, while 56 percent disapprove. In Florida, Rick Scott has a 29 – 57 percent gap. (Scott, you may recall, was elected with less than 50 percent of the vote in a very close election.)
But is their unpopularity due primarily to pushing for big changes in K-12 education? Or is the answer more complicated than that?
For an answer, we might take a look at what’s happening in Illinois. Conveniently situated between
Let's get serious about extending the school day
Sent to the Chicago Tribune, June 10, 2011
It was inspiring to read Jean-Claude Brizard's bold suggestion that Chicago extend the school day ("A push for longer school days," June 10). Proposals to extend the school day by 30 minutes or even an hour, however, fall far short of what is needed.
Let's push ahead and consider an even longer day.
A study published in the Journal of Irreproducible Results in 1991 concluded
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| Marshall teacher Anthony Skokna, fired for being a veteran teacher who earned too much. |
It's curious, this double standard we have when it comes to cracking down on low-scoring schools. The man in charge of the system retires with, among other things, a well-paid, do-little position at one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Meanwhile, the teacher on the front line winds
by Frederick M. Hess • Jun 10, 2011 at 10:22 am
Cross-posted from Education Week
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I'm up here today at UPenn's "NEST" gathering (Networking Ed Entrepreneurs for Social Transformation). Last night, after the opening dinner, a slew of interesting folks headed out for shop talk and Game 5 of Heat-Mavs. Given my knack for annoying my friends, I found myself wondering aloud about a question that a person of discretion really shouldn't ask at a gathering of entrepreneurs: namely, who's the most overhyped edu-entrepreneur of the moment?
Now, I always say that you can't much blame the hypee for being overhyped. Any smart entrepreneur is going to take advantage of opportunities to extend their work, so they're hardly to blame for taking advantage of a hype machine that's mostly the product of lazy journalists, fad-embracing reformers, thrill-seeking philanthropists, and wishful thinking. Nonetheless, the disappointing reality is how often we've taken terrific ideas and turned them into disappointments by blowing them up into fads.
Folks had various thoughts on the matter. But I won't put anyone else on the spot. Instead, for what it's worth,
When budget cuts menaced San Diego Unified last spring, the school board struck a tit-for-tat deal to get out of the hole. Employees agreed to take furloughs that shortened the school year by five days and cut their pay for two years. After that, San Diego Unified would gradually increase their pay roughly 7 percent.
The tradeoff for workers from custodians to principals was clear: Take a cut now but get more money later. It hinged on the hope that school funding would start to recover before the raises went into effect.
Now, less than a year and a half later, school board members who struck the deal are seeking to amend it, saying they fear the district's financial situation could be worse than they'd hoped. San Diego Unified is pressing its unions to put off those raises as it projects future shortfalls ranging from $25 million to $97 million. The board believes it could afford to cancel hundreds of layoffs if it delays the raises.
More than half of student governments at San Diego Unified middle and high schools that were checked by outside auditors don't keep adequate records for receiving cash, according to a preliminary audit.
When outside auditors checked on more than two dozen schools, they found that middle and high school student governments often lacked receipts or other documents to ensure the money was accounted for. Heather Daud, audit supervisor at Christy White Accountancy, said the school clerks know the rules, but often have trouble ensuring that other people follow them.
"People are handing them money without proper backup," Daud told a school district committee.
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