Wednesday, May 28, 2014

5-28-14 Fred Klonsky | Daily posts from a retired public school teacher

Fred Klonsky | Daily posts from a retired public school teacher who is just looking at the data.:







Carole L. Perlman. Using test scores to evaluate teachers creates problems.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR May 27, 2014 I was director of Chicago Public Schools testing programs for nearly 20 years. I’m all for accountability; I got a great education at CPS and feel strongly that the current students deserve the same. Using test scores to evaluate teachers seems like a great idea on the face of it, but it does not stand up to scrutiny. There are several basic problems, most having


And still we rise.
The night has been long, The wound has been deep, The pit has been dark, And the walls have been steep. Under a dead blue sky on a distant beach, I was dragged by my braids just beyond your reach. Your hands were tied, your mouth was bound, You couldn’t even call out my name. You were helpless and so was I, But unfortunately throughout history You’ve worn a badge of shame. I say, the night has be


The Senate passes SB 16 and Special Education funding is put at risk.
Yesterday the Illinois Senate passed SB16. The bill now goes to the House. It is claimed that SB16 will shift state funding to poor districts. No new funds will be made available in a state with the lowest state funding for education in the nation. The legislature is poised to cut education funding further. The IEA takes no position on SB16. This morning I asked Beverley Holden Jones about SB16. J

One big union.
  What would have been the impact of the Chicago Teachers Union and its dynamic militant leadership on a single teacher union the state? In 1998 at the National Education Association Representative Assembly in New Orleans nearly sixty percent of the delegates voted to oppose the leadership’s merger proposal – a proposal that would have united the nation’s two teacher unions: the NEA and the Ameri


Moral Monday in North Carolina. The Tillis 15. “We shall not be moved.”
. RALEIGH, NC – Hundreds of North Carolinians showed up yesterday to lobby their state legislators to repent for the harm they have caused, to repeal the flood of extreme policies passed last year and to restore confidence in our elected officials. Among them were 15 moral witnesses who visited Speaker Thom Tillis’ office at 3:30 pm yesterday and who staged a sit-in when the speaker chose not to

5-27-14 Fred Klonsky | Daily posts from a retired public school teacher
Fred Klonsky | Daily posts from a retired public school teacher who is just looking at the data.: Springfield legislators get summers off. Nobody complains. Will Guzzardi and Michael Madigan.One of the talking points for teacher bashing is how teachers get paid for summers off. When I try to explain how this isn’t true – that teachers contracts are a per diem – that we are contracted (in my case)