PARCC Cut Scores to Differ by PARCC State? | deutsch29

PARCC Cut Scores to Differ by PARCC State? | deutsch29:

PARCC Cut Scores to Differ by PARCC State?

In Spring 2015, a number of states and DC administered Pearson-vended PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) tests, supposedly aligned to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), which CCSS proponents assume surely translates into the well-marketed “college and career readiness.”

Ten states and DC entered into contracts with Pearson for the 2015 PARCC tests, with just over half of Massachusetts districts choosing to use PARCC. As for Louisiana, it had no contract with Pearson for PARCC and instead gave tests that PARCC now nebulously describes as “included items developed though the PARCC process.”

That was spring 2015. As for 2016, Louisiana will not be giving an entire PARCC test. (The 2015 legislature forbade contracting with PARCC for 2016 assessments and put a limit that less than half of 2016 assessment items could be PARCC items.) Too,Arkansas, Mississippi, and Ohio will not participate in PARCC in 2016.

So, as of this writing, for 2016, PARCC is down to seven states and DC.

Keep in mind that the whole point of PARCC was to provide ueber-standardized assessments to accompany ueber-standardized CCSS. The US Department of Education (USDOE) paid for both PARCC and Smarter Balanced to somehow “help meet the President’s goal of restoring, by 2020, the nation’s position as the world leader in college graduates.”

USDOE just knew that CCSS tied to PARCC/Smarter Balanced would magically translate into America’s Leading the World in College Grads.

Despite USDOE certainty that CCSS-tied PARCC would be instrumental in ensuring USA world educational dominance, on September 10, 2015, Catherine Gewertz PARCC Cut Scores to Differ by PARCC State? | deutsch29:

Marie Corfield: Remembering 9/11

Marie Corfield: Remembering 9/11:

Remembering 9/11

I've told this story many times, and on today's anniversary, I have to tell it again.

I took this picture somewhere around 1987

Having grown up less than 10 miles from Manhattan, I watched the Twin Towers being built every day as I walked to St. Stephen's School in Kearny. The Chestnut Street bridge offered the best vantage point. Every day, every week, every year they inched up higher and higher like two giant Lego towers, brick by brick, foot by foot. The audacity of their simplicity almost forcing them to lower Manhattan like the kid who is never allowed to sit with the cool kids at lunch because he doesn't look or act like them, but who inevitably leaves them all in the dust (in this case, quite literally).  

I had been to the observation deck many times; taken the PATH to NYC via WTC for as long as I can remember. On long, out-of-state trips I knew I was almost home, almost to Exit 15W on the NJ Turnpike or Exit 145 on the Parkway, when I could see them standing there like twin lighthouses at the southern tip of Manhattan, watching over commuters, guiding us home. "Yes, you've been to the 'other' world—the world without bagles and real pizza and Taylor Ham ('pork roll' to the rest of you). Now it's time to come home to the grit and the grime and the crowded and the busy and the endless days that dissolve into endless nights, and you know as crazy as it is to live here, you wouldn't want it any other way." Yes, I was home.

The Twin Towers were a part of the collective unconscious of everyone in that region just as mountain ranges are for those who live near them. They were always there... until they weren't. 

14 years ago today was my very first day teaching ever—except I didn't teach. Instead, I sat at the front door of Immaculate Conception School in Annandale all day and signed students out. From where I sat I had a direct view of Rt. 78. All day I watched as a constant stream of police, fire and rescue vehicles raced east from Pennsylvania and parts unknown to a scene unlike any most of them had ever seen or prepared for. At one point I held the hands of a woman who was in the car line to pick up her child. She was in a panic because her husband was an airline pilot and he was flying that day. She Marie Corfield: Remembering 9/11:

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Inslee Not Calling Special Session - Doesn't Back Charters

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Inslee Not Calling Special Session - Doesn't Back Charters:

 Inslee Not Calling Special Session - Doesn't Back Charters

Yet.  This from The Stranger:

Today, Governor Jay Inslee admitted to the outlaw nature of our current state government in a letter (.PDF) to all state legislators that, among other things, says flatly that Olympia's standing is eroding "with Washingtonians who expect we will support public education and live by the rule of law." 

 After three years of them not living by the rule of law, that's a bit of an understatement.

But given this concern for how he and others in Olympia are now perceived, will the governor call a special session right now to find the money for Washington public schools that's still needed in order to get himself and the legislature on the right side of the Washington constitution?

After all, what's still needed for schools is around $2.6 billion—a large amount, true, but only a fraction of the $8.7 billion Inslee gave Boeing in tax breaks during a very speedy special session called in 2013. (That, by the way, was the largest tax break ever given to any private company by any state, and as it was being handed out lawmakers and the governor knew they simultaneously needed billions for education. In other words, they found $8.7 billion for Boeing in a few days but have spent years not-finding a smaller number of billions for public schools, even though a decent public education is "the paramount duty" of our state under the Washington constitution.)According to today's letter from the governor, the answer to the question of whether he will call a special session for education right now is no—for now.

No special session (as some lawmakers want) to help out charter schools now that our state's charter schools law has been found to unconstitutionally use public money for private schools. (Inslee doesn't support charter schools, anyway.) And no immediate special session to find the billions he and lawmakers still need for Washington's public schools. 

Inslee does, however, have a "workgroup" of select lawmakers that's studying up on the whole unconstitutional underfunding of public schools thing, and how it might be solved, and if that workgroup can "find consensus" by November 19, when legislators are all going to be in Olympia anyway for "Assembly Days," then Inslee will call a special session "to get this work done."

Bottom line: In year three of our outlaw legislature, and day three of the Seattle teachers strike, Governor Inslee says it'll be months before he Seattle Schools Community Forum: Inslee Not Calling Special Session - Doesn't Back Charters:

“The Teacher Held My Hand” — Medium

“The Teacher Held My Hand” — Medium:

“The Teacher Held My Hand” 

My letter to members of the United Federation of Teachers in September of 2001, reposted today in memory of their heroism, and the of those we lost.

It was Primary Day. I was leafleting near Brooklyn Borough Hall with Alan Hevesi. Rush hour was nearly over. Suddenly, we heard an explosion. Smoke rose on the eastern horizon. We stopped campaigning and headed for the promenade. There the sight of one of the towers burning stopped us cold. Transfixed with disbelief, we watched a plane approach and then penetrate the second tower. A communal gasp, some screams, then silent horror swept through the growing crowd.

The rest of the day — I’ve never spent so much time at 110 Livingston — was spent in a blur of meetings, phone calls and huddles, gathering information on the state of the schools, making tough decisions on how to proceed, anxiously locating family and friends, sighing each time someone was safe, and crying each time someone was not.

As the towers collapsed, the mayor understandably wanted to evacuate all the schools, send every child home immediately. Chancellor Levy was ready to go along, but I strongly urged them to reconsider.

How could we send the children into the streets, into the unknown? What if they couldn’t get home? What if no one was home? What if there were more attacks? There were all kinds of ‘what ifs,’ some too terrible to think about.

Wouldn’t they be safer in the schools?

Convinced, the chancellor ordered the schools locked down. Together we developed a dismissal plan.

As evening approached, we needed to make a decision about the next day. Again understandably, the mayor’s office pressed for a return to normalcy as soon as possible. The schools should open, they argued. But again I differed. And again the mayor listened. Families would be able to spend Wednesday together, absorbing what had happened, explaining it to the children, helping them feel safe in this new, scary world.

Tuesday night, walking in my Brooklyn neighborhood, hearing the sirens and smelling the smoke, I gave thanks that there had been not a single report of a child hurt or missing in the day’s chaos. I knew our members were also safe, though three supervisors of school safety were injured. But I worried about you, especially about those of you in lower Manhattan and those whose loved ones were there.

I could only imagine what you had gone through. It was not until later that I learned of the miracles you had wrought, the extent of your professionalism, your dedication, your ingenuity and, yes, your heroism.

Across the city, teachers calmed nervous parents, reassured frightened youngsters (some of whom had witnessed the attacks and their aftermath from their classroom windows), stayed late until children could be picked up and even accompanied them home when no one showed up.

Some teachers took children to their own homes to stay until family members could retrieve them. Across the city, hundreds of high school students found themselves stranded, unable to reach home.

Gymnasiums became temporary shelters, and teachers stayed the night, sleeping in shifts. Many of these actions are described elsewhere in this paper.

But the most harrowing stories are those of the teachers and other “The Teacher Held My Hand” — Medium:

Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 9/11/15 #FightForDyett

SPECIAL NITE CAP 

CORPORATE ED REFORM

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Not Bill Gates: Meet Ted Dintersmith, an education philanthropist with a different agenda - The Washington Post

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Seattle Schools Community Forum: SPS Updates

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After 25 Years, Teach for America Results are Consistently Underwhelming | Nonprofit Quarterly

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Civility. | Fred Klonsky

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Ed Notes Online: Why Seattle Teacher Strike Matters - MORE and Port Jefferson Station Express Support

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Why borrowing from the ‘best’ school systems sounds good — but isn’t - The Washington Post

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Striking teachers say pay gap makes Seattle tough to afford

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YESTERDAY

Enrollment up at rescued Pittsburgh Woolslair school | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

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Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 9/10/15 #FightForDyett

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