Thursday, April 17, 2014

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Sun-Times editors know exactly what's wrong with 'turnaround' strategy

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Sun-Times editors know exactly what's wrong with 'turnaround' strategy:



Sun-Times editors know exactly what's wrong with 'turnaround' strategy

The Sun-Times editorial board has things all figured out. They know exactly why Byrd-Bennett's "radical" plan to turn more schools over to the private turnaround operators at AUSL will be a disaster. They say so themselves:
Radical, indeed. This treatment rips a community apart, including many teachers who sought out the toughest assignments only then to be unfairly blamed for the conditions they sought to improve.
They even have some clues as to why at least one of those schools, Gresham Elementary, is struggling and that it's little fault of their own.
[Gresham Principal] Brown deserves to be heard loud and clear in one area. She claims that CPS policies destabilized Gresham, contributing to its decline — and it’s hard to argue with her. For months last year, Gresham was on a closure list because of low enrollment. It was spared, but that undoubtedly hurt the school climate, and test scores dropped last spring. And this year, after a deal to share its building with a charter school fell through in August, Gresham’s budget was cut. Brown lost six positions, including three teachers and two adults who worked on social and emotional development with parents and students.
CPS acknowledges these destabilizing forces — and here’s the worst part — but said other candidates for a turnaround had undergone even greater recent changes.
So the S-T board knows exactly what's going on here. They know that the cause of the Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Sun-Times editors know exactly what's wrong with 'turnaround' strategy:

The Center for American “Progress:” Really?!? |

The Center for American “Progress:” Really?!? |:



The Center for American “Progress:” Really?!?





 The American Statistical Association recently released a position statement on VAMs–a statement that really should/could serve as one of a few “nail in the coffin” reports on VAMs. Others, however, continue to move forward with VAMS despite this position statement and all of its surrounding research.

That being said, the newest member to promote and push VAMs? The Center for American Progress.
As per their website, “The Center for American Progress is an independent nonpartisan educational institute dedicated to improving the lives of Americans through progressive ideas and action. Building on the achievements of progressive pioneers such as Teddy Roosevelt and Martin Luther King, our work addresses 21st-century challenges such as energy, national security, economic growth and opportunity, immigration, education, and health care. We develop new policy ideas, critique the policy that stems from conservative values, challenge the media to cover the issues that truly matter, and shape the national debate.”
Progressive? Pioneering?? Advancing “new” policy ideas??? Not so fast!!
According to a report they just released, here is exactly the progressive and pioneering policy ideas that they are advancing, summarized here specifically in terms of VAMs.
They write: “[W]e know much more about the impact of high-quality teaching on student achievement” citing in their PDF their take on a bunch of “research” studies that, on this and other points throughout the paper, are based almost entirely on the mainly technical The Center for American “Progress:” Really?!? |:

The Portland School Board's top 5 concerns about the Common Core | OregonLive.com

The Portland School Board's top 5 concerns about the Common Core | OregonLive.com:



The Portland School Board's top 5 concerns about the Common Core



Steve Buel


 Portland School Board members at their meeting on Wednesday voiced strong and wide-ranging opinions on the new Common Core student achievement standards, which take effect next school year.


But nearly every one harbored some worries about the coming tests. Here are some of the biggest concerns that came up:



* PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: Portland Public Schools isn’t prepared to take on the new standards.

Board member Ruth Adkins supports the Common Core, but she worries teachers haven’t been trained adequately. “Is the state providing sufficient time and resources for professional development?”

State officials said they have taken steps to help districts. The Legislature invested an additional $11 million to support implementation of Common Core this biennium.

Portland Public Schools now has a $496,000 grant to help transition to the Common Core. But Melissa Goff, the district’s executive director of teaching and learning, said the money would have been helpful four years ago when the district started implementing Common Core.





Common Core
The standards, adopted by 45 states across the country, aim to emphasize critical thinking over rote memorization. Supporters say the Common Core will help standardize higher levels of learning across the country. Oregon approved the Common Core in 2010, and districts will officially use state tests aligned with the standards in the spring of 2015.
* TECHNOLOGY: Portland Public Schools doesn’t have the right technology to implement the new tests.

Board member Tom Koehler described watching kids take a test at a school where “probably a quarter” of the computers weren’t working. “It was evident to me that day that at that school, the technology was a huge roadblock,” he said.

Josh Klein, the district’s chief information officer, acknowledged Portland Public Schools, generally, is behind with its technology.

“We haven’t made significant investments,” he said. “It’s 

Racism Without Racists: The School Resegregation Edition - The Jose Vilson

Racism Without Racists: The School Resegregation Edition - The Jose Vilson:



Racism Without Racists: The School Resegregation Edition

by JOSE VILSON on APRIL 17, 2014
in JOSE
Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall
Today, ProPublica released a special report on their website dedicated to the resegregation of America’s public schools. With the 60th anniversary of the Brown vs. Board of Education decision on May 17th approaching, ProPublica has focused this special section on Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where three separate and equally devastating stories will be told as case studies to highlight the effects of “letting” dreams of integration die on their own.
Unfortunately, progress never just dies on its own, and in this case, it’s not completely unintentional.
In fact, I also believe we’ve made the race problem in our public schools far too distant from us to truly to see it as a local as well as a national problem. For instance, if you took a guess as to which states had the highest rates of segregation in the country, you might assume it would be somewhere in the Southeast. The stigma about the Southeast works for both liberals and conservatives alike, who can point to our country’s history with slavery and eventual secessions during the US Civil War and say, “Well, that’s just the way it is over there.”
The problem is: it’s not just there. New York, Illinois, and Michigan that round out the top 3 states with the highest rate of school segregation (defined in this study as “the number of black students in schools where 90 percent or more of the student population are minorities”), all three blue states as per the 2012 election.
Therefore, it’s safe to assume that this isn’t just a “liberal” or “conservative” problem, but an “all public schools” problem. The Supreme Court, ruling in favor of Oliver Brown, et. al., said, in part:
Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the
- See more at: http://thejosevilson.com/racism-without-racists-school-resegregation-edition/#sthash.loQTZl3K.dpuf

Teacher Wage Theft | Reclaim Reform

Teacher Wage Theft | Reclaim Reform:



Teacher Wage Theft

Diane Ravitch interrupted me to exclaim, “It’s plain THEFT!”
Ravitch angerAs we spoke briefly before she made Sunday’s keynote presentation at this year’s Network for Public Education National Conference at the University of Texas in Austin in March, I was very surprised by the spontaneous, harsh verbal emphasis of her tone of voice and the noticeable anger displayed on her brow and in her eyes. She had already assured me that she would include teacher pensions as an issue in her address. Since her address had so many other specific topics, I knew that this inclusion crowded an already crowded set of agenda topics.
View her entire address HERE. View her entire interview with Bill Moyers HERE.
Since I had been talking with her about some specifics of pension raids against both active and retired teachers, it was this straightforward focus that gave me assurance that we were all in this together.
“It’s plain THEFT!”
In state after state active teachers were being forced by legislatures to increase the amount of money teachers are paying from each paycheck into their pension systems. At the same time the same legislators were saying that pension systems cannot and will not exist in the future. Therefore, legislators are forcing teachers to “save” money while promising them they will never get it back later. This is plain WAGE THEFT.
In state after state dual systems or choice systems force teachers to pay into 401k programs approved by legislators. These 401k programs make upfront profits (fees, handling costs, service charges, or premiums paid for by the teacher and/or employer) from this mandatory savings system while openly stating that the 401k programs will Teacher Wage Theft | Reclaim Reform:

Nite Cap 4-17-14 #BATsACT #RealEdTalk #EDCHAT #P2



James Baldwin said it best: 

"For these are all our children, and we will profit by or pay for whatever they become."


A BIG EDUCATION APE NITE CAP



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Morning Wink 4-17-14 AM Posts #BATsACT #RealEdTalk #EDCHAT #P2
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YESTERDAY

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Nite Cap 4-16-14 #BATsACT #RealEdTalk #EDCHAT #P2
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