Friday, March 20, 2015

46th District Seattle Democrats pass a resolution to support Nathan Hale High School teachers who do not administer the SBAC | Seattle Education

46th District Seattle Democrats pass a resolution to support Nathan Hale High School teachers who do not administer the SBAC | Seattle Education:

46th District Seattle Democrats pass a resolution to support Nathan Hale High School teachers who do not administer the SBAC

46th
This resolution is a highly shortened version of other legislative district resolutions but it does show support for the Nathan Hale teachers who choose not to administer the SBAC.
I have a feeling that the 46th will have wished they passed something stronger after the reaction of parents whose students go through the SBAC testing begin to surface.
At least Representative Gerry Pollett took a stab at it. One must give him credit because he was one of the state legislators who voted for the original Common Core Standards bill that was approved before the Common Core Standards had even been released.
Kudos to the 46th District voters who understood and appreciated the seriousness of what is happening in our schools. All but one member voted for the resolution. The person who voted against the resolution was Lisa Macfarlane of DFER. No surprise there.
And for the record, School Board Director Stephan Blanford, who lives in the 37th District, spoke rather in-eloquently against the resolution with some rather unbelievable mis-information. Not surprising given his financial backers. See the Post Script for more on his mis-representations.
To follow is the resolution:

NJ, Pearson, and PARCC: Lies or ineptitude? | Bob Braun's Ledger

NJ, Pearson, and PARCC: Lies or ineptitude? | Bob Braun's Ledger:

NJ, Pearson, and PARCC: Lies or ineptitude?

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 A legal analyst for the New Jersey education department told a legislative committee the other day that Pearson, the multi-billion British corporation that produces the PARCC tests,  could protect its “intellectual property” rights in the test by searching out what students are posting about the test on social media sites. The only problem with what Patrician Morgan said it this: Pearson doesn’t own the tests or the test questions.

A few days earlier, The New York Times blog “Bits” reported that PARCC–a coalition of a dozen states that hired Pearson to develop the tests–had ordered Pearson to stop using a database of student information to search out the students. There is a problem with that, too–few, if any, people outside the PARCC coalition even knew Pearson, a private company, had access to such a database.
Someone is lying. Or obfuscating. And the pity is that, given how feckless the New Jersey Assembly Education Committee was the other day in drawing out information from the education department, most parents are left not knowing what was going on.
State Education Commissioner David Hespe, in a move of breathtaking cowardice, refused to show up to answer the committee’s questions. He had been asked to come to the meeting days before but somehow could not clear his calendar in time to address the uproar over the revelations in his site that Pearson was spying on the social media postings of New Jersey children. Pearson also didn’t show him. To plead a previous engagement was, pure and simple, a lie.
Instead, he sent a young lawyer, Patricia Morgan, who read from a script and then offered  to answer questions, although it was clear she knew very little about the NJ, Pearson, and PARCC: Lies or ineptitude? | Bob Braun's Ledger:

Winner Of $1 Million Teaching Prize Has Some Depressing Thoughts About The State Of Education

Winner Of $1 Million Teaching Prize Has Some Depressing Thoughts About The State Of Education:
Winner Of $1 Million Teaching Prize Has Some Depressing Thoughts About The State Of Education























Nancie Atwell, who over the weekend won a $1 million award for her accomplishments in education, has been a teacher for more than four decades -- but she said she would not advise her students to go down the same career path.

After Atwell was awarded the first Global Teacher Prize from the Varkey Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to improving education for underprivileged students, she told The Associated Press that she feels "validated every day just by the experiences I have with children in the classroom."
However, in a subsequent interview with CNN, she said that she would not advise kids to become teachers.
"Honestly, right now, I encourage them to look in the private sector," she said during an appearance on "New Day." "Public school teachers are so constrained right now by the Common Core Standards and the tests that are developed to monitor what teachers are doing with them. It's a movement that's turned teachers into technicians, not reflective practitioners."
"If you're a creative, smart young person," she continued, "I don't think this is the time to go into teaching."
Depressing words -- especially coming from someone who has been in the field for 42 years.
The Common Core State Standards are a set of math and English standards that have been adopted in a majority of states in an effort to make sure students around the country are being held to the same learning benchmarks. In theory, Common Core issupposed to give teachers freedom over what is taught in their classrooms on a day-to-day basis. Some teachers, however, echo Atwell's complaints and say the standards actually limit them.
Atwell beat out 1,300 applicants from 127 countries to receive the prize, which the Varkey Foundation describes as the "Nobel Prize of teaching," Education Week reports. Atwell currently works at The Center for Teaching and Learning in Edgecomb, Maine, a school she founded in 1990. She has said that she plans to donateWinner Of $1 Million Teaching Prize Has Some Depressing Thoughts About The State Of Education:

Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on All the Days Post 3/20/15


Special Nite Cap Catch Up on All the Days Post 3/19/15


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CORPORATE ED REFORM



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