Latest News and Comment from Education

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

8-6-13 Perdido Street School

Perdido Street School:




Will Teachers And Schools Be Shown The Same Mercy The Tweedies Are Begging For?
Shael Polakow-Suransky on what the scores from the Common Core tests that will be released to the public tomorrow and are expected to show a sharp drop from last year mean:"You can't really compare these directly, because they're not just slightly different tests, they're dramatically different tests," said Shael Polakow-Suransky, the city's chief academic officer. "It's going to be difficult to m

Weiner Accuses Bloomberg Of Manipulating Test Scores And Closing Schools To Get Around The UFT Contract
Fresh from being told to go ---- himself by a voter on Atlantic Avenue yesterday, Anthony Weiner decided to go on the offensive against Mayor Bloomberg on education policy today:Former Congressman Anthony Weiner accused Mayor Michael Bloomberg of using school closures to skirt union rules and fudging test scores ahead of his 2005 re-election bid during a conversation on education policy this morni

Merryl Tisch And John King Have Rigged The State Tests To Produce "Failing" Results
Diane Ravich posted this today:New York City’s chief academic officer–a testing zealot–here announces that scores will plummet on the new Common Core tests administered last spring for the first time. They will plummet because the state decided to align its standards to NAEP, which are far more demanding than those of any state. Over the years, many researchers have maintained that the NAEP achiev

NYCDOE STILL Doesn't Have Common Core Curriculum Materials Ready
Tomorrow the new Common Core test results for ELA and math classes, 3rd-8th grade, will be released to the public.They are going to show some very, very low scores.The scores will be so drastically different from previous years because these tests were a) based on the new Common Core standards and b) had difficulty levels ramped up several grade levels for each grade (i.e., what used to be tested


 Anthony Weiner Cursed Out By Female Voter, Heckled By Homeless Man In Brooklyn
Add two more rings to the Weiner Circus:A fuming and foul-mouthed former constituent barreled into an Anthony Weiner campaign stop Monday to berate the shamed Congressman, saying he had "no right" to show his face in Brooklyn.As if that wasn't bad enough for Weiner - who has tried repeatedly to right his freefalling campaign - a man who reeked of booze jumped in the fray and started making crude p
Anthony Weiner Releases New "Ideas" Campaign Pamphlet On The Same Day His Sexting Partner Releases X-Rated Video
Weiner just can't turn a corner on this scandal:As Anthony Weiner continues to try–and often fail–to pivot the media conversation away from his sexting scandals, he released a sequel to his “Keys to the City” idea book today. The new one is creatively entitled: “Even More Keys to the City.”At a gusty afternoon press conference on a Queens pier overlooking the East River, Mr. Weiner made the case f
Ed Deformer Jeff Bezos Buys Washington Post
From Kaplan to Amazon:Billionaire Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos bought himself a new toy on Monday: the 136-year-old newspaper The Washington Post, which he acquired for $250 million from the Washington Post Company. The announcement blindsided the media world, where seemingly no one knew the U.S. capital’s flagship paper was for sale.Bezos says he will keep the Post separate from Amazon and w
Can You Imagine This Guy Running The School System?
Carrying Water For The Common Core
In a Wall Street Journal article that purports to cover New Jersey Governor Chris Christie taking on members of his own party over their opposition to the Common Core standards, Lisa Fleischer writes the following (emphasis added):There is growing resistance to the standards, including from some prominent Republicans, in part because they are worried about eventually losing state control over stan
State Needs To Release ELA/Math Tests In Their Entirety
Gotham Schools reported that the state, anticipating pushback on their standardized testing regime with scores expected to fall significantly on the new Common Core test results to be released this week, is going to let the public see a “significant number” of questions from the new Common Core-aligned tests that students took in April.The release of some test items by the state is meant to short-
Weiner Backs Bloomberg On Occupy Camp Attack
Carlos Danger, AKA Anthony Weiner, backed Mayor Bloomberg on his nighttime removal of the Occupy encampment at Zuccotti Park.Weiner, seen above running in the Ecuadorean pride parade and shouting “Que viva Ecuador!” through a bullhorn as parade-goers chanted Carlos! Carlos!", responded to a Wall Street Journal inquiry about how each prospective mayor would have handled the Occupy encampment and ot
Obamacare "Cadillac Plan" Tax Used Against Unions In Contract Negotiations
What many of us opposed to the Obama health care plan warned about us now coming to fruition:The so-called Cadillac tax was inserted into the Affordable Care Act at the advice of economists who argued that expensive health insurance with the employee bearing little cost made people insensitive to the cost of care. In public employment, though, where benefits are arrived at through bargaining with