Research Made Me Do It | The Crucial Voice of the People

Research Made Me Do It | The Crucial Voice of the People:

Research Made Me Do It

 “Research” can be defined as a careful investigation to discover facts…and so my Common Core saga began.

Asked if I would write an article about the Common Core standards, I hesitated because, already having boxes full of “standards,” I had purposely avoided stepping into that pile of manure again. But, I agreed to look at the topic closer and if I felt comfortable about my knowledge of the issue, I’d write something.

I began with the original “development team.” I looked deeply at the people deciding who to focus on based on their current title and place of employment. I looked into individuals that obviously worked for the education industry versus those working for public institutions. With 135 members, I had to narrow my search and this is about PUBLIC education, which is based on a public trust.

Six hours after beginning, I stood up from my desk with dry burning eyes and shaky knees.

It is not alright in my mind to have data collection, mining, and information systems specialists that already hold (therefore control) our information for national energy and defense systems to also hold student information and be part of developing “THE” standards upon which theResearch Made Me Do It | The Crucial Voice of the People:

Prestigious Dyslexic Lawyer David Boies Now Supports Campbell Brown’s Attacks on Teacher Tenure:

Prestigious Dyslexic Lawyer David Boies Now Supports Campbell Brown’s Attacks on Teacher Tenure

AUGUST 4, 2014 BY NANCY BAILEY LEAVE A COMMENT

Campbell Brown was just on Morning Joe again with David Boies as her new Chairman of the Partnership for Education Justice to fight teacher tenure. Remember David Boies, the respected, folksy, tennis shoed, liberal lawyer of Gore v. Bush fame? He has had many other high-profile cases too. I’ve always seen him as a good guy. Sorry, Mr. Boies. You just lost me.

Here is what is really fascinating and part of why I always respected Boies. He is the son of two public school teachers. He had dyslexia and didn’t learn to read until third grade. But he did attend public school—Fullerton Union High School in Illinois. And those teachers taught him how to read, I take it, or they helped him compensate for his reading difficulties, and pretty well. Mr. Boies graduated from Northwestern University in 1964, and he has law degrees from Yale and New York University. Not bad for a kid with dyslexia who attended public school and had public school teachers.

In fact, if anyone could be the poster child for success at a public school, David Boies would be that person. But it is apparently not to be.

Mr. Boies and Ms. Brown really try to make it sound like they are all about doing teachers a big favor. But you have to know right away, that they are both advocates for charter schools. Brown is on the board for the Success Academy Charter School. This is the charter group that is often accused of pushing students with special needs out. If Boies had been a little boy today and applied to go therePrestigious Dyslexic Lawyer David Boies Now Supports Campbell Brown’s Attacks on Teacher Tenure:

Personalization Depends On The Person - The Jose Vilson

Personalization Depends On The Person - The Jose Vilson:



Personalization Depends On The Person

Any so-called innovation deserves a second and third look when it’s brought to kids, even if it’s from Sir Ken Robinson. I sawthis in my timeline, which says the following:

“Education doesn’t need to be reformed – it needs to be transformed. The key is not to standardize education, but to personalize it, to build achievement on discovering the individual talents of each child, to put students in an environment where they want to learn and where they can naturally discover their true passions.” – Sir Ken Robinson

Whenever anyone mentions personalization, it usually involves some sort of tech, akin to extreme differentiation. Some folk have bastardized the word to include folks like Khan Academy or Rocketship, where the tech is more important than the pedagogy. Children get a responsive program in front of them that moves along depending on correct answers, but that’s responsive, not personalized. Slight difference.

Let me preface my forthcoming critique by saying that I do believe in personalization generally. I think we need to better direct our school system so that students can discover their own paths without feeling like they’ve failed some ominous adult’s expectations. I generally think students have to go a certain route because that’s what society says, within reason. We don’t have enough student voice in education, and fostering students voices matters in any democracy.

Having said that, personalization also depends a lot on the person doing the personalizing. Some of my favorite youth activists (thinking Stephanie Rivera and Hannah Nguyen here) always remind me how adults love to impose their adult issues onto kids. “Personalization” means different things. Some kids really don’tPersonalization Depends On The Person - The Jose Vilson: 

Sacramento Bee and Native advertising is ‘repurposed bovine waste’ - The Washington Post

HBO’s John Oliver: Native advertising is ‘repurposed bovine waste’ - The Washington Post:

HBO’s John Oliver: Native advertising is ‘repurposed bovine waste’

“Last Week Tonight,” John Oliver’s acclaimed HBO show, is getting journo-wonky on us, airing an 11-minute hit piece last night on the scourge of native advertising among big-time media players. Oliver took viewers on a quick history lesson through the innovation of blurring the lines between editorial content and advertising content, and then came to this conclusion: “I like to think of news and advertising as the separation of guacamole and Twizzlers. Separately they’re good. But if you mix them together, somehow you make both of them really gross.”

Among those mixing such treats is the New York Times, whose executive vice president of advertising, Meredith Levien, defended native advertising at a conference: “Let me start by vigorously refuting the notion that native advertising has to erode consumer trust or compromise the wall that exists between editorial and advertising. Good native advertising is just not meant to be trickery. It’s meant to be publishers sharing storytelling tools with marketers.”

Oliver jumped in: “Exactly, it’s not trickery. It’s sharing storytelling tools. And that’s not bull—-. It’s repurposed bovine waste.” Which brought the HBO’s John Oliver: Native advertising is ‘repurposed bovine waste’ - The Washington Post:

Sacramento Bee: Corporate Ed Reform is Good....Teachers Bad 

Tweeter Doesn’t Like Living in an Educational Oligarchy….But….What Can You Do? | Missouri Education Watchdog

Tweeter Doesn’t Like Living in an Educational Oligarchy….But….What Can You Do? | Missouri Education Watchdog:

Tweeter Doesn’t Like Living in an Educational Oligarchy….But….What Can You Do?

inShare

Twitter update:  I  was in a conversation on why I am against common core with a person who agreed that the adoption of Common Core set up an oligarchy and even though he/she didn’t like living in an oligarchy, he/she didn’t agree that by living in an oligarchy of non-governmental organizations directing public education was enough reason to be anti-Common Core.

He/she tweeted that ‘system is failing, someone needs to step in’.  I observed ‘And there’s your conundrum. Who gets to decide who the ‘someone’ is? And ‘who’ decides failure?’ 

The tweeter erroneously responded it is up to Congress to provide answers to those two questions.  According to this tweeter, Congress should be the arbitrator determining educational programs and educational success.  It is not within the power of Congress to decide who the someone is to set education policy, nor is it Congress who should be deciding failure.  These are the responsibilities of the states, not Congress.  How long has it been since Civics was taught in the schools?  Congress approved of the disastrous No Child Left Behind and the tweeter wants to support CCSSI that has been described as “NCLB on Steroids”?

The US Department of Education and Arne Duncan were quite creative in the continuing Federal foray into educational reform.  In the creation of Common Core, Congress did not directly Tweeter Doesn’t Like Living in an Educational Oligarchy….But….What Can You Do? | Missouri Education Watchdog:

LAUSD’s New Budget Unveils The “Sophie’s Choice” of Education Reform: How School Choice Is Pushed – redqueeninla

LAUSD’s New Budget Unveils The “Sophie’s Choice” of Education Reform: How School Choice Is Pushed – redqueeninla:



LAUSD’s New Budget Unveils The “Sophie’s Choice” of Education Reform: How School Choice Is Pushed

 When we grew our school system from one conducted by itinerant, very young generalists to that of a modern, publicly funded collection of certificated and professional specialists, we developed a system intended to be integrated at the “student-level”. That is, in attending specialized classes, these separate classes would all become blended inside of any given student. And any given student would be “composed” of exposure to a certain constellation of specialty subjects. In the meantime we determined what a core group of those specialty subjects looked like and acknowledged that there is a difference, in some sense, between certain “kinds” of classes.

Thus we had a High School in which there were an array of classes to be chosen and from which certain core courses needed to be taken by all – math, for example, to a certain level, and English Language Arts (ELA). There were “academic” classes and “physical education” classes and “performing arts” classes of, say, choir or chamber music or orchestra or theatrical production or drawing or painting. There were vocational classes intended to be learned from a master as an apprentice and utilizing physical skills rather than academic knowledge like, say, a foreign language. Instead these classes taught how to do some thing, in contrast with accreting the building blocks of understanding that would be used toward investigating some existential or academic life’s truth, say, ‘The Meaning Of Love’ or ‘how cancer develops’.

So all that knowledge gets integrated inside of the student, collected from a series of individual classes. And when these are absent, or diminished in quality, then the ability to integrate a full set of experiences and information is jeopardized. Here, parenthetically, is an interesting challenge to the wisdom of this protocol at least in earlier grades.

In practice, because the current paradigm relies on a large collection of disarticulated classes integrated elsewhere (inside the student), it is possible for the system to glide for a good while with an increasingly fewer set of constituent components without seeing a breakdown of the general setup.

And yet at some point, the fiction can no longer be sustained that a complex LAUSD’s New Budget Unveils The “Sophie’s Choice” of Education Reform: How School Choice Is Pushed – redqueeninla:

Standardized tests punish successful teachers: A plea for Orono’s Waldo Caballero — Opinion — Bangor Daily News — BDN Maine

Standardized tests punish successful teachers: A plea for Orono’s Waldo Caballero — Opinion — Bangor Daily News — BDN Maine:

Standardized tests punish successful teachers: A plea for Orono’s Waldo Caballero

Illustration by George Danby

 Recent years have been hard on teachers. Parents vilify them for not making tractable scholars out of their indifferent — and often out-of-control — children; they are assailed for their summer vacations; and their “modest” salaries are chronically suspect. Even Gov. Paul LePage regards public schools as dumping grounds for children whose parents cannot afford to send them to a private academy. I would think a successful teacher would be held up as an example of what can be hoped for in our classrooms.

Apparently, not in Orono. As I write, a drama is playing out in my hometown: A beloved Orono High School teacher of 14 years, Waldo Caballero, is threatened with termination because he has fallen two points short on an accreditation examination. In other words, he has successfully taught music, coached soccer and inspired legions of students for 14 years but is to be undone by two miserable points on a standardized test.

This is bureaucratic myopia at its worst. It reflects a system that punishes success and rewards mediocrity, and its salient characteristic is the hand-wringing obsessiveness with order: the unrounded decimal, the sharpened pencil, the justified margin. It thrills to the sight of a sea of response bubbles filled in with a No. 2 pencil on a mass-produced test.

I wonder what question Caballero got wrong. Perhaps it was the capital of Idaho. In which case, are we to believe that, had he correctly answered “Boise” for two points, he would have automatically gone from persona non grata to master teacher?

Caballero has amply demonstrated all the skills of the successful teacher: mastery of subject, dedication to his students and the ability to inspire. But in the eyes of the Maine Department of Education, all of these virtues are trumped by a crippling “credentialitis” that rates competence and success far below the push-button need to find a damnable missing two points. This is missing the proverbial forest for the trees.

We are living in an age when we have finally come to realize standardized tests are, on the whole, poor prognosticators of a child’s potential. It seems ridiculous to Standardized tests punish successful teachers: A plea for Orono’s Waldo Caballero — Opinion — Bangor Daily News — BDN Maine:

• VIDEO: Popular Orono High School music teacher may be dismissed over test score

Why We Should Not Copy South Korea | Diane Ravitch

Why We Should Not Copy South Korea | Diane Ravitch:

Why We Should Not Copy South Korea

Secretary Arne Duncan has frequently pointed to the high test scores of students in South Korea as a model for American students to copy. We have heard again and again that we are losing "the global competition" to nations like South Korea where students and parents take tests very seriously. Our students, the secretary never tires of telling us, are slackers. Their parents want them to be well-rounded when they should all be enrolled in Advanced Placement courses, burning the midnight oil, or attending after-school programs in ever-longer school days.

On Sunday, the New York Times published an article that refuted the myth of South Korea as the acme of educational excellence. The South Korean system, the author writes, is "an assault upon our children." If all you care about is test scores, South Korean schools look great. But if you want students who are thoughtful, creative, and engaged in their learning, look elsewhere, writes Se-Woong Koo, whose family moved from Seoul to Vancouver to avoid the stress of South Korean schooling. Most parents pressure students to excel in their studies and to do whatever it takes to get high scores.

"Thirteen years later, in 2008," the author writes, "I taught advanced English grammar to 11-year-olds at an expensive cram school in the wealthy Seoul neighborhood of Gangnam. The students were serious about studying but their eyes appeared dead."

The world may look to South Korea as a model for education -- its students rank among the best on international education tests -- but the system's dark side casts a long shadow. Dominated by Tiger Moms, cram schools and highly 

Why We Should Not Copy South Korea | Diane Ravitch:

Tim Meegan, The Shock Doctrine, our schools, and our children | Reclaim Reform

Tim Meegan, The Shock Doctrine, our schools, and our children | Reclaim Reform:

Tim Meegan, The Shock Doctrine, our schools, and our children

Posted on August 4, 2014by Ken Previti

Tim Meegan is a teacher at Theodore Roosevelt High School who explainedThe Shock Doctrine to school board members and parents alike. As a father and teacher he is living the reality of watching a school board intentionally starve his public schools in order to justify privatization for the profits of multinational corporations and worldwide investors.

Tim’s article in the Chicago Sun-Times is brief, thorough and eloquent.

“It is abundantly clear that CPS’ budget crisis, underutilization crisis and now the pension crisis are manufactured to force a situation so acutely painful that the solutions of venture philanthropists will seem the only logical options. They are quietly proceeding with mass privatization against the wishes of Chicagoans and CPS parents.”

“Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his pro-privatization friends want to blow up the public education system in this city by implementing CRPE’s vision. All they lacked was the crisis to justify radical change. Solution? Make one.”

“The formula for privatizing districts is the same all over the country: Open charters operated by private organizations. Simultaneously defund neighborhood schools, declare them “failing,” and then close them. Fire certified professional teachers and replace them with temporary, unskilled TFA recruits.”

“Parents and students have been calling for a boycott of school this fall. Only parents can stop this madness.”

Please read the complete article. “CPS Starving Its Schools to Justify Privatization.”

Whether your school district uses the Tim Meegan, The Shock Doctrine, our schools, and our children | Reclaim Reform:

Choosing Democracy: Welcome to Sacramento Superintendent José Banda

Choosing Democracy: Welcome to Sacramento Superintendent José Banda:

Welcome to Sacramento Superintendent José Banda

Welcome to Sacramento.  We hope that you can establish a positive working relationship with the Board, the community, and the teachers.  Developing a positive relationship and sustained, consistent leadership is required for school improvement.

We regret the prompt attacks on your character and your contract by the Sacramento Bee editorial board.  You see they were staunch advocates for the prior Superintendent Jonathan Raymond, a Broad Foundation assisted superintendent.  He left promptly without an explanation. It is unusual for the Bee to attack a new superintendent before he has an opportunity to make some decisions. 

Duane Campbell, Director.

Democracy and Education Institute

8-4-14 Schools Matter

Schools Matter:

Would Elizabeth Green Approve of A Book I Might Write on the Art and Craft of Journalism?

Somehow I doubt it, especially since I am not a journalist, haven't studied or practiced journalism, and know almost nothing about the origins, history, theoretical base, or conceptual understanding and shared knowledge of the craft and art of journalistic writing.I hope Elizabeth will forgive me, then, for being skeptical about her finally-published Columbia journalism research paper on pedagogy

by Jim Horn / 13min 

Profiteers on the Move in MA to Expand Charters in 2016

From Lisa Guisbond at CPS:Charter proponents may have been shocked to be handed a rare legislative defeat, but they are not sitting back on the heels of their designer shoes. The State House News Service reported this week that charter advocates "are already eyeing the 2016 ballot" and "reaching out to supporters in the business and education communities, as well as potential donors

by Jim Horn / 19min 

Campbell Brown Clip from Colbert Show

The Colbert ReportGet More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,The Colbert Report on Facebook,Video Archive

by Jim Horn / 3min 

8-3-14 Schools Matter

Schools Matter: From Korea to KIPP: "production, performance, and obedience"Reading the essay by Se-Woong Koo on the South Korean system of educational child abuse, I was struck by how much of what he said could have come from former teachers of KIPP who have since let their conscience be their guides: incredible stress, diminished affect, clumps of hair falling out, physical and psychol

by mike simpson / 21min 

8-4-14 Seattle Schools Community Forum Week

Seattle Schools Community Forum:

Update on McCleary and Fully-Funding K-12 Education in Washington State

From Washington State Budget&Policy Center: Today, Pacifica Law Group filed an amicus brief with the Washington State Supreme Court on our behalf that makes it clear that legislators cannot responsibly address the requirements of the McCleary decision to fully fund education without raising new revenue.Joining us as co-signers on the brief are Centerstone, Equity in Education Coalition, Elderc

by Melissa Westbrook / 0min 

Washington State Gets "Mixed" Review in Rankings for States for K-12 Education

From the Huffington Post, a report about a ranking list from a personal finance site, Wallethub, for K-12 education in the 50 states.  Washington state ranks 15th overall (kind of surprising) but 29th in spending, giving our state their "mixed" ranking.  They give our state a 50 for "Education output and safety."Education Output & SafetySafest Schools (Percentage of Public

by Melissa Westbrook / 24min 

Seattle Schools and Title IX

I asked the Department of Education spokeperson about issues around Title IX and Seattle Schools and here was their statement:We can confirm that OCR is currently investigating a Title IX sexual violence case involving the Seattle Public Schools. As this is an open investigation, we cannot share any additional information. For more on how OCR handles civil rights complaints, please see our Web sit

by Melissa Westbrook / 1:41 PM UTC-7 

PE at Your Neighborhood Community Center?

This was in the Northgate Community Center activities schedule.  Apparently, you can get a high school (maybe middle school) PE credit for this class.  Have you seen this elsewhere?  (Credit to Carolyn Leith for pointing this out.)

by Melissa Westbrook / 0min 

8-3-14 Seattle Schools Community Forum Week

Seattle Schools Community Forum: A Reminder to Our ReadersThis is a community forum blog.  To me and Charlie, that means anyone can come and discuss anything relevant to public education from national right down to specific Seattle schools/programs.  We try to guide the conversation but not define it. You can opine/inform on topics on just about anything in public education.  We provide open threa

by mike simpson / 19h 

8-4-14 LA School Report - What's Really Going on Inside LAUSD

LA School Report - What's Really Going on Inside LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District):

State legislatures are moving ahead on K-12 issues

State legislatures are moving ahead on K-12 issues In a year when 46 states will hold legislative elections and 36 will select governors, lawmakers in various states pushed ahead on education priorities, including pre-K education, teacher evaluation, and revisions to school funding formulas. Those issues and others managed to break through despite continued ferment around the Common Core State Sta

2 18min 

Low voter turnout predicted in LAUSD board race

Low voter turnout predicted in LAUSD board race Even as the runoff election appears to be tightening to fill the vacant LA Unified school board seat in south LA, the question is not only who will win, but just how low can voter turnout go? Set for August 12, the stand-alone election not only falls in the dog days of summer, but also hits on the first day of school, when parents tend to have their

by Jamie Alter Lynto... / 40min 

Ridley-Thomas voter group going all out for Johnson

Ridley-Thomas voter group going all out for Johnson Mark Ridley-Thomas Alex Johnson has no greater supporter in his bid for LA Unified’s District 1 board seat than Mark Ridley-Thomas, the LA County Supervisor he has served as an education aide. But it’s more than Ridley-Thomas’s vocal support that’s helping Johnson in his quest to beat George McKenna in the Aug. 12 runoff after McKenna outpolled h

by Michael Janofsky / 7min 

Morning Read: Renowned trial lawyer takes on teacher tenure

Morning Read: Renowned trial lawyer takes on teacher tenure Celebrated trial lawyer to head group challenging teacher tenure David Boies, the star trial lawyer who helped lead the legal charge that overturned California’s same-sex marriage ban, is becoming chairman of the Partnership for Educational Justice, a group that former CNN anchor Campbell Brown founded in part to pursue lawsuits challengi

2 14min 

8-2-14 This Week in LA - School Report - What's Really Going on Inside LAUSD

LA School Report - What's Really Going on Inside LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District):LAUSD holding a conference to help black, Latino boysLAUSD holding a conference to help black, Latino boys LA Unified is joining President Obama’s initiative to help improve educational outcomes for African American and Latino boys. At Loyola Marymount University on Monday, the district will conduct a day-

by mike simpson / 47min