Mission High and the Full Beauty of the World | The Jose Vilson

Mission High and the Full Beauty of the World | The Jose Vilson:

Mission High and the Full Beauty of the World

Let me first recommend everyone read Kristina Rizga’s Mission High: One School, How Experts Tried To Fail It, and the Students and Teachers Who Made It Triumph (Nation Books, 2015). I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you how many education books I’ve read in the last few years that namedrop the infamous A Nation At Risk report at the catalyst for the current status quo of public schooling, and how the mere mention of T.H. Bell or David Gardner usually knocks me out.

What sets this book apart from those books is its fascination and attention to the voices of the students, teachers, and principal. The reader is pulled into the lives of the inhabitants of Mission High School in San Francisco, CA, rooting for their uplift, drowning in their frustrations. At some points, the reader forgets that Rizga’s narrating the book, letting the understandings of the people she interviews take over her writing. She also comes from a sect of white education journalists who can deftly write about race with a three-dimensional nuance, sans platitude, stereotype, or self-indulgence.

But I don’t really do book reviews. I write essays.

As such, I’d like to key in on one of the students she interviewed, George, and the spark he left in my mind here:

George used to think that people who think slowly are not smart, but close work with his classmates made him realize that rushing to answers is not always the best way to solve problems. It was often the slower thinkers who forced everyone to deliberate on the relative advantages of various ways to get to the answer. ‘Human brains are too weak to appreciate the full beauty of the world, and rushing through any process makes you miss out on important parts,” he says.

Even without context, you can tell this student keyed in on something that few policy wonks tap into, and that’s the idea of what an education is.

The more we attempt to formulate and extrapolate the milieu of a good classroom, we get these nuggets of evidence that perhaps we’re focused on all the wrong things. It’s not enough to simply critique the standardized testing element because, even without that, pundits can standardize everything else, from the number of books our students must read to the lesson plans educators use in classrooms. So when I ask us to opt out of the whole status quo, I’m asking everyone to reconsider what deserves standardization and why.

Take George’s reasoning as an example. Would we rather demand that all students think exactly the way the teacher does about the math problem in front of them or would we want to have a larger Mission High and the Full Beauty of the World | The Jose Vilson:

Questions linger about who has control of the independent charter school and its public funds.

Old Town Academy agreement with Tri-Valley Learning Corporation raises questions | SanDiegoUnionTribune.com:

Charter to open school year amid concerns over governance

Old Town Academy has agreement with Livermore corporation

Old Town Academy will welcome students back for a fifth year next month, even as questions linger about who has control of the independent charter school and its public funds.

The academy has replaced its executive director, two members of its governing board, and other staffers following a rough end to last school year after the administration entered into an unusual agreement with a Northern California charter organization.

The Tri-Valley Learning Corporation, based in Livermore, lists Old Town Academy as one of its six schools on its website. But the San Diego Unified School District, which authorized the charter, said the corporation has no authority or decision-making power over the local campus.

San Diego Unified gave the school the green light to open this year after the charter’s board passed a resolution July 27 assuring the district that the corporation does not control the school. However, the resolution is clear that the charter “desires to ultimately become a school of Tri-Valley.”

San Diego Unified hopes to resolve its concerns over the agreement during proceedings this fall that will determine if the school’s charter is renewed beyond the 2015-16 school year. The district was so troubled by the corporate agreement that it withdrew $23 million in Proposition Z bond funds that the campus had been eligible to use last year for facility upgrades.

“The money is off the table because we couldn’t encumber public funds for a school that has significant governance and operational issues,” said Susan Park, who oversees charter schools for San Diego Unified. “We do not recognize Tri-Valley as the charter operator. The school needs to demonstrate a level of being operationally sound.”

The school’s new executive director, Jon Centofranchi, said the campus is moving forward under a new collaborative approach that will give parents and educators a strong voice. Before taking the academy’s top post, he worked as principal at Mission Middle School in Escondido until December 2014, when he was put on administrative leave without explanation.

Centofranchi declined to discuss the past.

“It doesn’t serve any positive purpose to rehash things that happened in the past,” he said. “We need to focus on making this the best possible school.”

Centofranchi said he is unclear on the full extent of Tri-Valley’s role with the school, except that it would handle the “business side.”

Officials from Tri-Valley were unavailable for comment. 

Under California law, charters are publicly funded and independently run schools that may operate outside Old Town Academy agreement with Tri-Valley Learning Corporation raises questions | SanDiegoUnionTribune.com:

Training in dealing with trauma-affected students is sought for Compton schools - LA Times

Training in dealing with trauma-affected students is sought for Compton schools - LA Times:

Training in dealing with trauma-affected students is sought for Compton schools

Compton Unified student Kimberly Cervantes is part of a class action lawsuit seeking academic and counseling services from the Compton Unified School District. Attorney Annie Hudson-Price looks on.  (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Attorneys representing students who have suffered from violence and other trauma in a lawsuit against the Compton Unified School District asked a federal judge Thursday to immediately require teachers, administrators and staff to undergo training to recognize and understand the effect of such incidents on students.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of eight Compton Unified School District students, alleges that the school system has failed to properly educate students who have suffered from repeated violence and other trauma.

The litigation alleges that the district has failed to address the underlying obstacles these students face and have inadequately trained teachers and others to provide these students an appropriate education.

U.S. District Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald is expected to decide in coming weeks on whether to grant the injunction, which would require the training. He is also considering a request by the school district to dismiss the lawsuit altogether.

The litigation could test whether “complex trauma” qualifies as a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act. If the lawsuit is successful, school districts would be required to provide special academic and mental health services to students who have suffered from violence and other trauma.

The lawsuit describes in detail some of the traumatic episodes of several students, who were frequently disciplined and kicked out of schools and not given appropriate help and services to address their problems.

One student at the age of 8 first witnessed someone being shot to death. Since then, he has witnessed another 20 shootings, including the killing of a friend.

Another student, a Dominguez High junior, struggled academically after suffering physical violence from the boyfriends of his mother, a drug addict. He was kicked out of foster care and resorted to sleeping on the roof of the high school, the lawsuit said. After he was found by school officials, they offered no help to him, the lawsuit alleges.

The boy said he often grew enraged, sometimes believing a "demon" was within him.

Another student, Kimberly Cervantes, 18, a senior at Cesar Chavez Continuation School, stopped attending school for weeks at a time after several traumatic episodes, including being told by teachers that her bisexuality was "wrong,"  the suit said.

Mark Rosenbaum, an attorney with Public Counsel, a Los Angeles-based pro bono law firm that filed the lawsuit along with Irell & Manella LLP, urged the court to force the district to immediately provide the training.

"These students cannot wait for deliberations,” he said. “They are being stopped at the school house door. They come to school not even knowing they suffer from complex trauma but then they are treated differently Training in dealing with trauma-affected students is sought for Compton schools - LA Times:

CURMUDGUCATION: Hillary's Teacher PAC, Part II

CURMUDGUCATION: Hillary's Teacher PAC, Part II:

CURMUDGUCATION: Hillary's Teacher PAC, Part II

 You may recall that back at the beginning of the summer, a group calling themselves America's Teachers cropped up as a PAC supporting Hillary Clinton. I did a little websurfing to see what I could find and wrote about the results.


The brain behind the PAC is a young man named Naveed Amalfard, who is the PAC's national chairman, a 2014 graduate of Emory University, and a Teach for America guy about to start his second year as a math teacher in DC. My piece about America's Teachers did not makes his day, and the drubbing some folks tried to give him on twitter made his day even less, and so he reached out to me, and this afternoon, we both took a break from beginning-of-year preparations to have a phone chat.

And so I'm prepared to answer the question-- is America's Teachers more nefarious dark money political shenanigans, or something else?

Amalfard seems like a pleasant guy, and I opened by giving him the chance to respond to the piece I wrote. He said that they (he used the word "we" throughout) were surprised to see an attack on their organization, and were particularly unhappy to find themselves linked to DFER and CAP and other Naught Persons and generally marked as negative for reasons they don't feel are merited. This prompted them to want to start a dialogue, and I readily admit that their impulse seems healthier than, say, an impulse to simply assassinate my character in their own space.

Amalfard has fine-tuned his message and mission. From the five points originally listed, AT now stands heavily for universal pre-school, college affordability, and post-secondary schooling for Dreamers. Amalfard circled back around to these three points many times. This is what they want.

I allowed as how since their original appearance, I had had trouble deciding whether they were a skullduggerous front for More Big Money or just one guy with a dream. Amalfard allowed as how CURMUDGUCATION: Hillary's Teacher PAC, Part II:

solidaridad: AALA: Eli Broad and Charter Expansion

solidaridad: AALA: Eli Broad and Charter Expansion:

AALA: Eli Broad and Charter Expansion

The Los Angeles Times reported earlier this month that the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation is leading an effort to expand the number of charter schools in LAUSD. The Broads are being joined by the Walton Family and the Keck Foundations, among others. The expansion of charter schools is supposed to decrease the number of children attending what the charter industry calls failing schools or those with lower test scores. The aim is to get at least 50% of these children in the privately-run charter schools which could potentially be located on District sites. LAUSD already has about 100,000 students attending charter schools, more than any other school district in the country. In an email to LA School Report, the officials from the Broad Foundation wrote, “Too many of our school children still aren’t getting the quality of education they deserve, which is why tens of thousands of students are currently on public charter school waiting lists. We are in the early stages of exploring a variety of ideas about how to help give all families—especially in low-income communities of color—access to high- quality public schools and what we and others in the philanthropic community can do to increase access to a great public school for every child in Los Angeles.”

Officials from charter organizations, such as ICEF and Green Dot, are, understandably ecstatic about the proposal as it will generate more dollars for their programs. The foundations could provide funding for early administrative costs of new charters and for teacher training. Board Member Mónica Garcia said she is open to the foundations’ plans and says that her district could benefit from additional charter schools. However, not everyone is happy about this expansion. Because charter school teachers are not unionized, UTLA is not supportive of these independent schools and feels that input of teachers is disregarded. In a call to members, Alex Caputo-Pearl, UTLA President, vowed to fight the plans of the foundations, saying they are “out to destroy collective bargaining.” Board President Steve Zimmer is concerned that the charter schools will continue to be selective about who they enroll, leaving those students who require more specialized services and resources at the District schools. A mass exodus of students to charters will also severely decrease state and federal funding for the traditional schools.

As has been noted before, Eli Broad, the Waltons and other billionaires have been active in LAUSD politics for many years and have supported controversial efforts for reform. Financial resources have been provided candidates for the Board of Education that AALA has not supported and who have been strongly procharter. It should also be noted that Dr. John Deasy, former LAUSD Superintendent, was a graduate of the Broad Superintendent Academy and is now the Superintendent-in-Residence for the Broad Center. In fact, it has been reported that Eli Broad said that John Deasy was the best Los Angeles superintendent in memory. That, in and of itself, should give us all a reason to pause and look at this expansion plan with a critical eye.solidaridad: AALA: Eli Broad and Charter Expansion:

TEA Finally Takes a Look at Kids Left Hanging After Charter Goes Belly-Up | Houston Press

TEA Finally Takes a Look at Kids Left Hanging After Charter Goes Belly-Up | Houston Press:

TEA FINALLY TAKES A LOOK AT KIDS LEFT HANGING AFTER CHARTER GOES BELLY-UP

When the Girls and Boys Preparatory Academy closed at the end of last school year, the charter school on Bissonnet left behind a mess of extraordinary proportions – the extent of which is only now beginning to come to light.

Transcripts and attendance records are missing. Grades and report cards aren't there. Students can't prove they deserve course credit for classes they took and passed. And without these records, parents and grandparents say they're being told they don't have the necessary paperwork to register their children anywhere for this coming school year, which starts Monday. Or for students to go on to college.

“My granddaughter is sitting at home. I can't get her enrolled,” said A.J. Felix, who said he was a single parent taking care of his five grandchildren. His 17-year-old granddaughter is a special ed student, he said, adding that he thought the school would be good for her needs. Instead, he said, even though she studied for the state STAAR test, she was never given it and he was constantly given excuses by the school's director, Fred Taylor, that things would be sorted out.

“We have no transcripts, no final report card,” he said. 

Felix was just one of the relatives who came to the former home of the small charter school – one of the original 19 charter schools to open in Texas when it began in 1995 – in the hopes of talking to two investigators sent there by the Texas Education Agency (“a bit late,” critics charge).

However well-intentioned and effective the school known as the Girls and Boys Preparatory Academy on the southwest side of Houston might have once been, there was scant evidence of glory days in its former home Wednesday. It was allowed to stay open last year after the state announced it would be losing its charter because it continuously failed to meet financial or academic standards.

The TEA did send a conservator to manage the school last April after countless complaints about the operation of the pre-K to 12th grade school from parents and others, we're told, but there's little evidence that person straightened anything out during the remainder of the school year that ended in June.

TEA investigators Jaime H. Reyes and Park Brigtsen would not comment Wednesday. “We can't make any comment while a complaint is ongoing,” said Reyes.

Parent Margo Woods said she is trying to get her nine-year-old daughter into school anywhere but has been unsuccessful so far. She said her family stuck with the school “even though they lost our daughter on the second day she went to school here.”

Woods said they were attracted to the school thinking it was going to have a family atmosphere, but found there was little stability with constant teacher turnover.

“Fast-forward to the school shutting down without warning. They left us out to dry without any enrollment records,” she said.

Woods also had a 16-year-old daughter at the school, a special ed student who after being happy enough there began to get written up for offenses. “They told us we had to find someplace else to put her.” Another person close to the school says it began trying to phase out its special education students after releasing a special ed director the year before.

One bit of bright news: Holly Huffman, spokeswoman with the Houston ISD, said the district will work this out if any of the former charter students find their way there.

“We want transcripts, but if they have anything — report cards, progress reports — anything that shows what grade level they might have been in in that school, they need to bring that and registrars may be telling parents to bring that.

“If they don't have any of that, then on the first day of school – we can't turn kids away – we can do a temporary placement. We don't have to have records,” Huffman said. “We want to make sure kids have a place to go to school and get educated.” TEA Finally Takes a Look at Kids Left Hanging After Charter Goes Belly-Up | Houston Press:

Jersey Jazzman: Jeb!'s Florida Education Meh-racle

Jersey Jazzman: Jeb!'s Florida Education Meh-racle:

Jeb!'s Florida Education Meh-racle



After watching Jeb! Bush talk about his Florida education "miracle" at Campbell's Brown's little union-bashing festival, I thought it would be instructive to make a quick graph:

I've standardized Florida's scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress over time as a way of comparing the state to the other 49 plus DC. The NAEP tests reading and math in Grades 4 and 8. Upward bars are above average scores; downward bars are below average.

You'll notice that Jeb! is always bragging on Florida's Grade 4 Reading scores. What he rarely mentions, however, is how his state does on Grade 8 tests, or on math tests. This graph makes clear why: Florida has been either at or below the (weighted) average on Grade 4 math and on Grade 8 reading and math for the last two administrations of the test. Yes, there was a bit of a bump on Grade 4 math in the 2000s, but the scores came back to Earth.

Does this look like a miracle to you?

Normally, I think any politician who gets up in front of people and brags on how his policies turned around his state's schools practically overnight is being ridiculous. There are just too many factors other than policy changes involved in affecting test scores: economic changes, demographic changes, cohort effects of other sorts, measurement - See more at: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2015/08/jebs-florida-education-meh-racle.html#sthash.xy2Am12c.dpuf

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: RELEASE: Alliance hits Campbell Brown's 'Summit' on 4th day of Dyett hunger strike

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: RELEASE: Alliance hits Campbell Brown's 'Summit' on 4th day of Dyett hunger strike:

RELEASE: Alliance hits Campbell Brown's 'Summit' on 4th day of Dyett hunger strike

For Immediate Release: August 20, 2015
Contact: Madison Donzis, madison@fitzgibbonmedia.com, 210.488.6220

Education Advocates Condemn Discussion Around Public Education in Campbell Brown’s New Hampshire Education Summit

Yesterday, former CNN anchor Campbell Brown held an education summit in New Hampshire, where she interviewed six Republican presidential candidates about their stances on K-12 public education.

Keron Blair, Director at The Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools (AROS), a coalition of parents, students, educators and community members, issued the following statement in response:

“While parents, teachers and students of an AROS member organization in Chicago are hunger-striking to keep their only neighborhood high school open--and to keep it open as a high quality sustainable community school--the Republican candidates are dodging questions and promoting corporate interests in public schools that are at the root of school closures and underinvestment in public Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: RELEASE: Alliance hits Campbell Brown's 'Summit' on 4th day of Dyett hunger strike:

Pedro Noguera to confront inequity in SMMUSD

Noguera to confront inequity in SMMUSD:

Noguera to confront inequity in SMMUSD

The Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District can tout the talents, accomplishments and college placements of its most successful students.

But, as Pedro Noguera is quick to point out, the district’s mission goes beyond that.

“The real challenge for a school system is, ‘How good are we with those who need us more?’” Noguera said.

It’s a challenge the district has asked Noguera to address. The educator and sociologist has been hired to help SMMUSD officials close the longstanding achievement gap that exists between African American and Hispanic students and their peers at local campuses.

Noguera’s initial contract, which is for up to $110,000, starts this month and goes through the end of 2015, according to a district report.

The well-spoken, charismatic scholar delivered the keynote speech at the district’s convocation Tuesday morning at Barnum Hall on the campus of Santa Monica High School, and he’ll be hosting follow-up workshops with district administrators and Board of Education members in the coming months.

The hiring of Noguera is among several actions being taken by the district as it seeks to improve race relations.

The district is also planning to train Samohi staff on restorative justice and community building with the help of the California Conference for Equality and Justice.

The Long Beach-based human relations group will receive up to $80,000 to address issues of bias, bigotry and racism in education. The contract goes through the end of the 2015-2016 school year.

Noguera, who was recently appointed to join UCLA’s education faculty after a stint at New York University, has worked with schools and districts across the country in advisory roles.

He said teacher collaboration, professional development, strong community ties and student-centered learning are among the keys to improving schools.

“We know … that education should be the strategy, the institution we rely on to create a more equitable and just society,” he said. “But we also know it can’t just do it by itself. It takes a deliberate focus to make it happen.”

During a speech that was received with loud applause, Noguera offered a broad outline of methods for reducing the achievement gaps in SMMUSD schools.

Parental engagement, he said, is crucial. He said staff must be trained to communicate with parents across racial and socioeconomic lines and that there should be events to promote parental interaction. He added that the district should provide guidance for parents on how they can support their children.

At the student level, Noguera said, block scheduling, peer study groups, literacy assistance, extracurricular activities and community partnerships have proven to be beneficial. He Noguera to confront inequity in SMMUSD:

Baby Got Class -- A back to school parody

Baby Got Class -- A back to school parody

This one goes out to all the teachers, bus drivers, administrators, and support staff who teach and love our children. THANK YOU for all you do!

CONTACT info@VisitTheGreenroom.com for permissions and to learn about our day jobs

Badass Teachers Association: The Deception Goes Deeper: Friedrichs vs. CTA Part 2

Badass Teachers Association: The Deception Goes Deeper: Friedrichs vs. CTA Part 2:

The Deception Goes Deeper: Friedrichs vs. CTA Part 2

Rebecca Friedrichs, the main plaintiff behind Friedrichs v California Teachers Association et al has not been working alone. She has been a strong proponent of National Employee Freedom Week (NEFW).

While the list behind the coalition of NEFW does not sound like the “who's who” of corporate educational reform, the size of this organization is disconcerting. All but eight states have organizations that support this cause which advocates for privatization of public education and destruction of unions. It is important to know who the players are. The two national founding partners behind this endeavor are theNevada Policy Research Institute (NPRI) and the Association of American Educators (AAE). A person may question why NPRI is involved with such an endeavor, but keep in mind that this endeavor will not only hurt education, it will influence other unions. Las Vegas Casinos are a huge union industry. The devastation of unions for this city would be very beneficial to casino investors while being very harmful to the workers. This is evidenced in Atlantic City by Carl Icahn's recent replacement of pensions and benefits with 401K plans and insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

When you look at the Board of Directors for NPRI it is glaringly evident that this organization is stacked heavily with people that would seem to have a heavy personal interest in any union Badass Teachers Association: The Deception Goes Deeper: Friedrichs vs. CTA Part 2:

New Statewide Education Standards Require Teachers To Forever Change Lives Of 30% Of Students - The Onion

New Statewide Education Standards Require Teachers To Forever Change Lives Of 30% Of Students - The Onion - America's Finest News Source:

New Statewide Education Standards Require Teachers To Forever Change Lives Of 30% Of Students

SPRINGFIELD, IL—In an effort to hold classroom instructors more accountable, the Illinois State Board of Education unveiled new statewide education standards Friday that require public school teachers to forever change the lives of at least 30 percent of their students. “Under our updated educator evaluation policy, teachers must make an unforgettable, lifelong impact on at least three of every 10 students and instill a love of learning in them that lasts the rest of their lives,” said chairman James Meeks, adding that based on the annual assessments, if 30 percent of students don’t recall a particular teacher’s name when asked to identify the most influential and inspiring person in their lives, that instructor would be promptly dismissed. “We are imposing these standards to make certain that a significant proportion of students in any given classroom can someday look back and say, ‘That teacher changed the course of my life, making me who I am today, and there’s no way I could ever repay them.’ Anything less is failure.” Meeks also confirmed the implementation of another rule aimed at ensuring that no more than 40 percent of a teacher’s students end up in prison.New Statewide Education Standards Require Teachers To Forever Change Lives Of 30% Of Students - The Onion - America's Finest News Source:

Are We Seeing Light at the End of the Re-Segregation Tunnel? | John Thompson

Are We Seeing Light at the End of the Re-Segregation Tunnel? | John Thompson:

Are We Seeing Light at the End of the Re-Segregation Tunnel?

Are we seeing light at the end of the resegregation tunnel? The work of Nikole Hannah-Jones, Chana Joffe-Walt, Alana Semuels, and the scholars who help inform their journalism provides hope, as does the first episodes of David Simon's and Paul Haggis's new HBO miniseries, Show Me a Hero.

The genius of This American Life, for instance, is similar to that of Simon and Haggis, and together their work may contribute to a critical mass of Americans rethinking our benign neglect attitude toward segregation. Like HBO, NPR portrays individuals in a way that makes children's and parents' emotions and voices come alive.

As we study a wave of carefully-honed analyses of integration's potential to improve schools and our entire lives, we should pay special attention to the beginning of The Problem We All Live With Part Two. High School freshman Kiana Jackson "is a kid who frequently scans the room for a more exciting option than what is right in front of her," Joffe-Walt reports. So, "of course," this is how Kiana reacted when she saw a bunch of white kids who she knew for sure did not go to her school:

And we're like, there's no white kids in our school. And then like, I'm a really social person. So I see these kids and I was like, OK, they do not go here. What are they doing here? I want to find out.

Similarly, the Atlantic Magazine's Alana Semuels, in The City That Believed in Desegregation, adds to the work of Sarah Garland, who documented what went right with integration in Louisville, Kentucky. At first, white resistance was intense, but as Gary Orfield of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA reminds us, "Many of the residents' fears failed to materialize, and after a few years the protests ceased." He describes the driver of success, "people are amazed to discover that people from another race or ethnic group are actually pretty similar to them."

Orfield further explains why Louisville was right to stay the course, "One of the reasons white people leave central cities is because schools become segregated before neighborhoods do. ... White families stop buying in certain areas where the schools become all poor and non-white."

On the other hand, Failure Factories, by Cara Fitzpatrick, Lisa Gartner, and Michael LaForgia of the Tampa Bay Times, documents the tragedy of resegregation in Pinellas County, Fl. Fitzpatrick, Gartner, and LaForgia explain that desegregation efforts Are We Seeing Light at the End of the Re-Segregation Tunnel? | John Thompson:

Hunger Strikers Fight for Chicago’s Dyett High School | Education Town Hall Forum: Weekly Broadcast Archives, Extended Discussion, plus Monthly BUS Ride

Hunger Strikers Fight for Chicago’s Dyett High School | Education Town Hall Forum: Weekly Broadcast Archives, Extended Discussion, plus Monthly BUS Ride:

Hunger Strikers Fight for Chicago’s Dyett High School

Jeannette Taylor and Anna Jones of the Coalition to Revitalize Dyett High School in Chicago are in the fourth day of their hunger strike demanding re-opening of a neighborhood high school in their community. They joined the Education Town Hall from outside the school on August 20.

“Racism is alive and well in this country,” say protestors, accusing both Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and their local alderman, Will Burns, of caring more about families from wealthier neighborhoods and willfully closing schools in brown and black communities.

The office of Alderman Will Burns told the Education Town Hall he was “unavailable for comment.” This was no surprise to protestors who say he “does not make working class or poor families his priority.”

Aisha Wade-Bay, another coalition leader, spoke to the Education Town Hall on August 13 about their struggle and their plans for a Global Leadership and Green Technology High School at Dyett.

Hunger strikers say this action is a last ditch effort and that no one has listened to their demands for five years. They ask those outside Chicago to help amplify this message calling Mayor Emanuel to say “we support those who #FightforDyett.”

Chicago Organizers Lead Hunger Strike for Dyett High School 
  Tweet your support to #SaveDyett, #WeAreDyett & #FightForDyett

Go to Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools Website

There he goes again: Gov. Scott Walker keeps talking about a teacher who asked him to stop - The Washington Post

There he goes again: Gov. Scott Walker keeps talking about a teacher who asked him to stop - The Washington Post:

There he goes again: Gov. Scott Walker keeps talking about a teacher who asked him to stop

There he goes again.

For years now, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) has been telling a story about a young award-winning teacher who lost her job in a school district layoff under a last-hired, first-fired policy that existed in his state before he pushed through legislation eliminating it.

The teacher is Megan Sampson, who became famous in 2011 when Walkerwrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal defending his efforts to end collective bargaining by teachers unions in Wisconsin. Sampson was offered her job back a few months after being laid off, but by then had gone to work in a different district.

Since then, Walker has mentioned her in speeches as well as in at least one more published op-ed. Details of his story have changed in the telling over the years — the exact nature of the award she won being among them — but the essence remains the same, and he repeated it yet again on Wednesday during an interview with Campbell Brown at an “education summit” co-hosted by her organization, The 74.

Unfortunately, Walker keeps talking about Sampson even though she wishes he would stop it. Shortly after the 2011 op-ed was published, she told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

“My opinions about the union have changed over the past eight months, and I am hurt that this story is being used to make me the poster child for this political agenda. Bottom line: I am trying to do my job and all this attention is interference and stress for me.”

She expressed concerns again in June after a new op-ed by Walker was published in the Des Moines Register shortly before he announced his candidacy for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. The Associated Press wrote in this story:

But Sampson says in an email to The Associated Press that “I do not enjoy being associated with Walker’s political campaign.” She says Walker does “not have permission from me to use my story in this manner, and he still does not have my permission.”

I have asked Walker’s campaign if he knows that Sampson wants him to stop talking about her but have not received a response. I’ll update this post if I get one.

One of the things that changed in Walker’s stories of Sampson was the nature of her award. In 2010, Sampson won the Nancy Hoefs Memorial Award  given by the Wisconsin Council of Teachers of English for first-year language arts teachers.  In 2011, Walker wrote in his op-ed, “In 2010, Megan Sampson was named an Outstanding First Year Teacher in Wisconsin.”  But in a speech in Iowa on Jan. 24, 2015, he called her Wisconsin’s 2010 “outstanding teacher of the year,”  a description that ruffled the feathers of Claudia Felske, a teacher in Wisconsin who was actually named the 2010-2011 Wisconsin High School Teacher of the Year.

Felske, incidentally, entered Marquette University in 1986 with Walker. She There he goes again: Gov. Scott Walker keeps talking about a teacher who asked him to stop - The Washington Post:

Fixing Teachers » Missouri Education Watchdog

Fixing Teachers » Missouri Education Watchdog:

Fixing Teachers

Dr. Sandra Stotsky published a book in March of this year titled, “An Empty Curriculum: The Need to Reform Teacher Licensing Regulations and Tests”which both explains how we got to a place where our teachers can barely pass a certification exam, and provides a pathway out of the mess. Michael Poliakoff wrote a great review of her book on The American Council of trustees and Alumni’s website. Excerpts are provided below.

Dr. Stostky has devoted her entire career to maintaining high standards in American education, particularly in the training of teachers. As Senior Associate Commissioner in the Massachusetts Department of Education, she directed the revision of Massachusetts’ K–12 curriculum standards, as well as the regulations for teacher licensure and licensure testing. Together, these formed the essential elements of the “Massachusetts education miracle.” Since 2007 she has been a senior professor in the University of Arkansas’ Department of Education Reform. Most recently, she has travelled the nation sounding a warning about the harm that coercive implementation of the Common Core standards will do to both K–12 and higher education. Many in the world of education find her message inconvenient, but it will be to the nation’s great harm not to listen to it with careful attention.

In March 2015, Rowman and Littlefield released Dr. Stotsky’s new book, An Empty Curriculum: The Need to Reform Teacher Licensing Regulations and Tests. It is a relatively short book, as welcoming to the non-expert as it is replete with insights for the veteran, but it is also an uncompromising book that leaves the apologists for poorly trained teachers no room to hide.

Starting on the first page of the book, Dr. Stotsky explodes the convenient and comforting belief that state regulations are a reliable assurance that teachers are “academically competent to teach the subjects they were legally licensed to teach.” These tests, she shows, are often set at a standard well below reasonable expectations for a college student, much less a college senior or college graduate (pp. 105–107). And the percentage of correct answers required for a passing score is shockingly low in many states—what constitutes a passing score is a decision left to each individual state. And adding to all of that, Dr. Stotsky reminds the reader that the passing score is compensatory, i.e., a candidate for a teaching license can get entire sections of the exam wrong but still pass on the strength of other parts of the exam (see esp. pp. 18–20). Nor does accreditation provide any reasonable quality assurance. Dr. Stotsky cites the report of former president of Teacher’s College Columbia, who recommended closing most of the nation’s 1200 education schools and excoriated the system of accrediting education programs for its failure to ensure teacher quality. ACTA publicly—and successfully—opposed the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) for its ideological focus on the “dispositions” of teacher candidates regarding social justice. Dr. Stotsky points (p. 126) to the failure of this organization and its successor, the Council for Accreditation of Education Preparation (CAEP), to ensure that prospective teachers actually know the subjects they will teach.

How did we get into this mess? Chapter 4 of An Empty Curriculum provides a window into the sorry history of how, in a process underway by the end of the Second World War, teacher licensure tests moved away from a serious assessment of intellectual skills, general knowledge, and command of the subject the candidate aspired to teach. The question of the capacity of a licensure exam to predict the effect a teacher would have on his students’ achievement is legitimate. It quickly gave rise, however, to a system in which faculty from education schools would evaluate proposed questions for the licensure exam on the basis of whether each question corresponded to something covered by Fixing Teachers » Missouri Education Watchdog:

Excitement and Anxiety: The First Day of School — Schoolhouse Voices — Medium

Excitement and Anxiety: The First Day of School — Schoolhouse Voices — Medium:

Excitement and Anxiety: The First Day of School

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been seeing teachers posting pictures of their classrooms on Facebook, saying, “My classroom’s ready!” That takes me right back to my childhood, helping my mom prepare her classroom for the students in the waning days of August.

My mom taught second and third grade at Valley Cottage Elementary School. And I remember her ritual of using the days before Labor Day to ready her classroom for her students.

Of course, preparing the classroom — even back then — meant spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars out of her own pocket on supplies — just as her colleagues did and teachers do today.

When I was a kid, we were lucky to have a laundry room that housed the washer and dryer, of course, but also served as my mom’s office, filled with all the supplies she bought for her class. It was a treasure trove of books and paper and pens.

She worked so hard every year to get ready to open the doors and welcome her students. Even years after she retired, when we were moving my parents out of that house, the laundry room was still stocked with school supplies. And my own basement is still stocked with all my lesson plans and supplies from the years I taught.

That brings me to my own time teaching. I remember the first day of school my first year in the classroom. My stomach churned with a mixture of excitement and anxiety. Could I do the job? Could I connect with the kids? Will there be the chemistry to build relationships and get the job done, or will I totally flop?

Me with my social studies class at Clara Barton High School, in New York

As much success as I had had doing legal work, doing litigation, advocating in the courtroom or negotiating at the bargaining table, it was really different teaching kids — and frankly much harder.

It’s more than just knowing your content and what you’re going to teach. It’s classroom management. It’s the connection with kids. Can I manage my classroom without a hiccup? Do I have a good set of classroom protocols? Do I have all my handouts in order, all stapled? Will I know what to say, or am I just going to melt into a puddle?

Because kids see you as you really are. It’s like you’re stripped down to nothing. It’s almost like you’re naked, and they can see whether you’re a fraud or the real thing.

I remember my heart pounding as I walked into Clara Barton High School that first day. Will I be able to do it? Do I have what it takes to connect and teach and make a difference in the lives of these kids?

And for that same reason, the first day of school is the most optimistic day of the year. It’s a new start. A new chapter. A new chance to engage with students and colleagues. The dawn of a new day and year.

I loved teaching social studies. And I loved starting each year by teaching Excitement and Anxiety: The First Day of School — Schoolhouse Voices — Medium: