What work is.
by Philip Levine, the new US Poet Laureate
The 40,000-member United Teachers Los Angeles is not known as a leader in education reform. In fact, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a former teachers union employee, characterized UTLA leaders as standing as, “one unwavering roadblock to reform.” But reform is brewing within the UTLA.
NewTLA, a progressive caucus within UTLA, currently holds 90 of the 350 elected leadership seats in UTLA’s official governing body. With over 25% of the seats, NewTLA holds considerable power to shift UTLA policy towards NewTLA’s priorities which include: comprehensive teacher evaluation, meaningful professional development, and quality-based criteria for determining layoffs and dismissals. Earlier this year during a hotly contested runoff election for union president, NewTLA endorsed underdog and self-described change agent Warren Fletcher over UTLA vice-president and front-runner Julie Washington. Fletcher won the
I had lunch with American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten this afternoon here in New York. Our conversation was filled with interesting tidbits, and I'll give it a fuller treatment on the blog tomorrow. For now, I want to share her take on the recall vote in Wisconsin yesterday, in which Democrats won two of the six Republican seats up for grabs, falling two seats short of the number needed to gain control of the state senate.
The election was an important milestone for labor unions, which spent millions attempting to recall Republican lawmakers allied with Gov. Scott Walker, who successfully curtailed collective bargaining rights for teachers and other public employees. Conservative organizations such as Americans for Prosperity, funded by the Koch brothers, also poured millions into the state. "If you don't think Citizens United had an impact, just look at
Imagine going out to dinner at Mayor Rahm’s restaurant. The food is just so-so. You’ve had way better. But even worse is the fact that when you get the bill, it says you owe $85.
But there is nothing on the bill that says what you ordered. It is loaded with gibberish.
Over the next few days, and with very little notice, there will be hearings around the city on the proposed property tax increase for Chicago Public Schools.
The hearings are tonight, tomorrow night and Friday night. The budget is 2,000 pages long. Parents are welcome to comment.
Sure.
There should be no tax increase until the books are opened for serious scrutiny and the Chicago Teachers Union
This was written by Alfie Kohn, the author of 12 books about education and human behavior, including “The Schools Our Children Deserve,” “The Homework Myth,” and the newly published“Feel-Bad Education . . . And Other Contrarian Essays on Children & Schooling.” He lives (actually) in the Boston area and (virtually) atwww.alfiekohn.com.
By Alfie Kohn
Read full article >>
LONDON (AP) — Young rioters clogged Britain's courthouses Wednesday, each one painting a bleak picture of a lost generation: a 15-year-old Ukrainian whose mother died, a 17-year-old who followed his cousin into the mayhem, an 11-year-old gangster arrested for stealing a garbage can.
Britain is bitterly divided on the reasons behind the riots — some blame the unrest on opportunistic criminality, others say conflicting economic policies and punishing government spending cuts have deepened inequalities in the country's most deprived areas.
Many of the youths themselves struggle to find any one plausible answer, but a widespread sense of alienation emerges from their tales.
"Nobody is doing nothing for us — not the politicians, not the cops, no one," a 19-year-old who
The DeVos are joined in the outspoken group of billionaires who proclaim publicly that they favor ending government involvement in education. Among the biggest contributors are Richard Mellon Scaife (owner of the Pittsburg Tribune Review), and the Koch family foundations. Other foundations include Olin, Bradley, Smith Richardson and the Walton family who join in the drive to
Cari's downfall came after he assisted Stuart Levine, a corrupt trustee of the Illinois Teachers' Retirement System who was also convicted in the scandal, in an attempted extortion. Levine made a series of calls in 2004 to executives of JER
One of the summer scandals keeping us education wonks amused until school starts is a American Federation of Teachers gaffe in Connecticut. Union officials posted online an analysis of their lobbying against a parent trigger law in that state that revealed too much about their distaste for letting moms and dads decide who should run their schools.
Bloggers RiShawn Biddle and Alexander Russo exposed the union celebrating its gutting of a Connecticut version of California’s parent trigger law. School reform organizations and editorialists were aghast. AFT president Randi Weingarten disowned the Web post. Activists
How can big urban school districts succeed?
Here's the second major element they need: a pipeline of leaders flowing into their classrooms and principal offices.
All the innovation projects in the world won't make a difference without teachers who know how to lead a classroom and principals who know how to preside over a campus.
Fortunately, the Dallas school district has tried to get ahead of the curve here. Former Superintendent Michael Hinojosa made a priority out of improving DISD's principal corps. He was selective in many hires.
Unfortunately, the district has not had enough top-notch candidates. Sometimes Hinojosa's hands were tied. He
Influential school advocacy group, Parents Across America, today rejected Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s controversial waiver proposal.
While Parents Across America (PAA) agrees that No Child Left Behind is an unrealistic, rigid and punitive law, the waivers that Duncan has now proposed are likely to be equally bad, if not worse. The Department of Education could force more states to adopt the Common Core Curriculum thus continuing to ignore the fact that it is illegal for the federal government to impose a national curriculum. The proposal is also likely to expand the destructive agenda of over-testing, school closings, and privatization, despite the fact that these policies have no scientific evidence to
Joy Pullmann is managing editor of School Reform News and an education research fellow at The Heartland Institute.
The president has decided to take a tack on the largest federal education law he certainly wishes were available in budget battles: bypassing Congress and legislating through administrative agencies by offering states waivers in exchange for education policies he favors.
Adjacent to President Obama's press conference Monday concerning the national credit downgrade, Education Secretary Arne Duncan stepped up to blame Congress for failing to reauthorize No Child Left Behind by the fall deadline Duncan set. So, Duncan says, in September he will issue criteria for receiving Department of Education waivers.
A president and cabinet member insisting Congress do its job attends
The Obama administration is pursuing a second round of its education reform agenda. The first round was "Race to the Top," which created a competition among states for extra federal grants that would be won by states with the most impressive reforms. This time around, instead of dollars -- there is no new money to hand out -- the Department of Education is using regulatory relief. The 2001 No Child Left Behind law imposed fairly rigid requirements and standards. Everybody agrees it needs updating, but Congress is too dysfunctional to update it, and has been for several years running. So the Department is offering to waive the standards for states that comply with a second round of reform.
The anti-reform left is, naturally, up in arms. Former conservative education guru turned hard-left reform opponent Diane Ravitch tweets, "What is NOT federal role in education: telling schools what to do, how to reform, punishing them for not agreeing with
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Webinar Description
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The U.S. Department of Education and its partners United Way Worldwide, National PTA, SEDL, and Harvard Family Research Project invite you to participate in the eighth installment of this webinar series:
Evaluating Family Engagement Strategies: Addressing Measurement Challenges
August 18, 2011, 2:00–3:30 p.m. (EDT) [11am-12:30p.m. PDT]
Evaluating family engagement strategies to demonstrate their impact on student learning is essential for strengthening practice, and is becoming an increasingly important factor in securing program funding. Yet evaluation in this field is still in a developmental phase, and there are few clear guidelines available for identifying meaningful indicators of successful family engagement efforts.
This webinar will highlight promising approaches for evaluating family engagement strategies, address challenges in defining and measuring outcomes, and provide guidance for building evaluation into a family engagement plan from the beginning. By defining measurable objectives early in the planning process, it becomes possible to connect family engagement efforts to important milestones—such as increases in parents’ understanding of how to support learning at home—as well as the ultimate goal of increased student achievement.
Evaluating Family Engagement Strategies will be presented through a roundtable discussion among evaluation experts and will address questions such as:
The roundtable format will allow ample time to address questions and comments from the webinar audience. We encourage your participation during the webinar discussion and also invite you to submit questions in advance anytime before August 18. You may submit questions via email to fine@gse.harvard.edu, or via Twitter, directing comments to @HFRP and using the hashtag #FEchat. Due to time restraints we will not be able to address all submissions.
Featured panelists include:
This webinar series is funded in part by the U.S. Department of Education's Parental Information and Resource Center program. The content of this webinar series does not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Department of Education.
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