Saturday, October 15, 2016

Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 10/15/16


Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 10/15/16

Featured Post

Breaking News: Charter Resolution Ratified by @NAACP National Board – Cloaking Inequity




NAACP ratifies controversial resolution for a moratorium on charter schools - The Washington Post
NAACP ratifies controversial resolution for a moratorium on charter schools - The Washington Post : NAACP ratifies controversial resolution for a moratorium on charter schools The North Carolina NAACP’s president, Rev. William Barber, gestures during a news conference in Richmond in June. On Saturday, national NAACP leaders backed a moratorium on the expansion of charter schools. (Steve Helber/AP
Catch up with CURMUDGUCATION: There Are More Important Things
CURMUDGUCATION : Catch up with CURMUDGUCATION There Are More Important Things 17 by Peter Greene / 2h This is Homecoming week at my high school; Thursday parade, Friday game, and tonight, the Big Dance. It's a big deal. I've been the Student Council adviser in charge of all this stuff for years and years now, and I never cease to be amazed at how worked up some students get about it. After all, i
Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Rehabilitating Rahm Emanuel
Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Rehabilitating Rahm Emanuel : Rehabilitating Rahm Emanuel After spending much of the past year in the Democrats' dog house, it appears Rahm is being rehabilitated. Now that Clinton feels that IL in the bag, it's becoming safe for party regulars, including POTUS himself, to be seen and even have their pictures taken with the mayor. On Tuesday, Emanuel felt confident
Breaking News: Charter Resolution Ratified by @NAACP National Board – Cloaking Inequity
Breaking News: Charter Resolution Ratified by @NAACP National Board – Cloaking Inequity : Breaking News: Charter Resolution Ratified by @NAACP National Board Statement Regarding the NAACP’s Resolution on a Moratorium on Charter Schools CINCINNATI – Members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Board of Directors ratified a resolution Saturday adopted by delegat
gbrown: "Democracy Now" Award-Winning Journalist Amy Goodman to Turn Herself in to North Dakota Authorities on Monday Oct. 17
gbrown: "Democracy Now" Award-Winning Journalist Amy Goodman to Turn Herself in to North Dakota Authorities on Monday Oct. 17 : "Democracy Now" Award-Winning Journalist Amy Goodman to Turn Herself in to North Dakota Authorities on Monday Oct. 17 "'I will go back to North Dakota to fight this charge. It is a clear violation of the First Amendment,' said Goodman. 'I was doing my job as a journalist
LAUSD’s Huntington Park Considers Charter School Moratorium | deutsch29
LAUSD’s Huntington Park Considers Charter School Moratorium | deutsch29 : LAUSD’s Huntington Park Considers Charter School Moratorium Los Angeles is the center of a major push by billionaires Eli Broad and the Waltons to expand the charter school sector. However, a new, potential complication to the billionaire will for charter schools for non-billionaire children is the sensible idea that public
October 2016 Information Memoranda - State Board of Education (CA Dept of Education)
October 2016 Information Memoranda - State Board of Education (CA Dept of Education) : October 2016 Information Memoranda Background information and updates on issues of interest to the State Board Members. Periodically, the State Board Members may receive information memoranda from State Board staff and the California Department of Education. The information memoranda may include background info
DoED settlement: For-profit school must scale back student success claims - CSMonitor.com
DoED settlement: For-profit school must scale back student success claims - CSMonitor.com : DoED settlement: For-profit school must scale back student success claims Advertisements for DeVry, a for-profit university, claimed that since 1975, 90 percent of graduates find a job within six months of graduation. The government says that those claims are unsubstantiated. The US Department of Education
Minority students are underrepresented at the nation’s top public schools - MarketWatch
Minority students are underrepresented at the nation’s top public schools - MarketWatch : Minority students are underrepresented at the nation’s top public schools More evidence our nation’s top public schools are turning into bastions of wealthy, white students Our public higher education system, typically thought of as a great equalizer, isn’t as great an engine of social mobility as we imagine
Mayor Kenney Blasts School Reform Commissioner’s Approach To Languishing Teacher Contract Talks « CBS Philly
Mayor Kenney Blasts School Reform Commissioner’s Approach To Languishing Teacher Contract Talks « CBS Philly : Mayor Kenney Blasts School Reform Commissioner’s Approach To Languishing Teacher Contract Talks CITY HALL (CBS) — The four-year-old stalemate between the Philadelphia School District and its teachers appears to be fraying nerves, and not just between the union and the district. On Friday
Tada! Students Soon to Get Trained Dance and Theatre Teachers
Tada! Students Soon to Get Trained Dance and Theatre Teachers : Tada! Students Soon to Get Trained Dance and Theatre Teachers TADA! made it through both houses of the legislature, buoyed by the support of the California Teachers Association, California Federation of Teachers, California Dance Education Association and California Educational Theatre Association. This effort picked up many vocal al
Reinvigorating Our Unions: Organizing Ourselves First, to Meet the Changing Times | Alternet
Reinvigorating Our Unions: Organizing Ourselves First, to Meet the Changing Times | Alternet : Reinvigorating Our Unions: Organizing Ourselves First, to Meet the Changing Times A union president explains how labor needs to adjust to be relevant today. This isn’t your father’s labor movement. Back when my dad was a Cleveland bus driver and member of the Amalgamated Transit Union, Americans had a m
Randi Weingarten Response: There is 'Hope That ESSA Will Bring Positive Change To Classrooms' - Larry Ferlazzo
Response: There is 'Hope That ESSA Will Bring Positive Change To Classrooms' - Classroom Q&A With Larry Ferlazzo - Education Week Teacher : Response: There is 'Hope That ESSA Will Bring Positive Change To Classrooms The new "question-of-the-week" is: What practical impact do you think The Every Student Succeeds Act will really have in the classroom? The Every Student Succeeds Act is the successor

YESTERDAY

Bill Gates' Billions Blocking Him From Enlightenment - Jeff Reifman
Bill Gates' Billions Blocking Him From Enlightenment - Jeff Reifman : Bill Gates’ Billions Blocking Him From Enlightenment Citizen Microsoft, Seattle Weekly Cover Last week, Bill Gates called on political leaders to accelerate innovation . “But innovation starts with government support for the research labs and universities working on new insights,” he said. “The public sector’s investments unloc
Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 10/14/16
Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 10/14/16 Featured Post The Most Important WikiLeaks Revelation Isn’t About Hillary Clinton | New Republic Huntington Park: Tiny city becomes battleground in larger war over LA charter 




Top Posts This Week

NAACP ratifies controversial resolution for a moratorium on charter schools - The Washington Post

NAACP ratifies controversial resolution for a moratorium on charter schools - The Washington Post:

NAACP ratifies controversial resolution for a moratorium on charter schools

The North Carolina NAACP’s president, Rev. William Barber, gestures during a news conference in Richmond in June. On Saturday, national NAACP leaders backed a moratorium on the expansion of charter schools. (Steve Helber/AP)

Leaders of the NAACP, the oldest civil rights organization in the United States, bucked intense pressure from supporters of charter schools on Saturday and ratified a resolution calling for a moratorium on the expansion of charters and for stronger oversight of these schools.
Members of the NAACP’s board of directors, meeting in Cincinnati, ratified a resolution adopted in July by delegates to the organization’s 2016 convention that called for a moratorium on more charter schools until:
1. Charter schools are subject to the same transparency and accountability standards as public schools
2. Public funds are not diverted to charter schools at the expense of the public school system
3. Charter schools cease expelling students that public schools have a duty to educate
4. Cease to perpetuate de facto segregation of the highest-performing children from those whose aspirations may be high but whose talents are not yet as obvious.
This was not the first time the NAACP has expressed concern about charter schools, but this resolution goes further than others approved in recent years and had generated an intense campaign by supporters of charters to try to persuade the group’s board not to ratify it.
The campaign included pro-charter columns, blog posts and editorials, including by The Washington Post, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. A letter signed by 160 NAACP ratifies controversial resolution for a moratorium on charter schools - The Washington Post:


Catch up with CURMUDGUCATION: There Are More Important Things

CURMUDGUCATION:

Catch up with CURMUDGUCATION







There Are More Important Things
This is Homecoming week at my high school; Thursday parade, Friday game, and tonight, the Big Dance. It's a big deal. I've been the Student Council adviser in charge of all this stuff for years and years now, and I never cease to be amazed at how worked up some students get about it. After all, it is the first Big Dance of the year, and for our freshpersons, the first Big dance of their entire hig

YESTERDAY

Student$Fir$tNY Bankrolls GOP
StudentsFirstNY launched back in 2012, an Empire State spin-off of the StudentsFirst orgnization launched by former DC chancellor, She Who Will Not Be Named. She was always nominally a Democrat (check out this awesomely non-prescient article from 2012 that says she's taking over the Democratic Party), but the NY branch of StudentsFirst was formed by Jenny Sedlis , who worked with Eva Moskowitz (th

OCT 13

Embracing Education Productivity?
Rick Hess recently posted a piece that makes a couple of discussion-worthy points while neatly sliding right past a couple of other ones. In " Why You Should Learn to Love Educational Productivity ," Hess argues for an embrace of "productivity," but I'm not sure that word means exactly what he thinks it means. We get to the "productivity" issue by sliding past a different one. Hess opens by noting
Fed's Stupid Teacher Prep Program Rules
The feds have released their rules governing teacher preparation programs, and they are just as stupid as they have promised to be all along. How stupid? Kate Walsh of the impossible-to-take-seriously National Council on Teacher Quality saw the rules and pronounced them even "better" than she had expected , with extra-super-accountability. The genius portion is the part that links college teacher

OCT 12

Closing the Achievement Gap
There are some educational issues that have become so covered with layers and layers of detail and nuance and policy and jargon and baloney and nature's own fertilizer that it can become difficult to see the relatively simple problem that lies beneath the giant mounds of stuff. Closing the achievement gap is one such issue. It's the subject of considerable discussion and policy wrangling, and is t

OCT 11

FL: Oh, Come On Now!
I don't even want to be still writing about this story, but apparently Florida's flock of school administrators include some of the most terrible people ever. So here we are. You will recall that several Florida parents sued their district, the state, and anyone else connected to the baloney-faced rule about refusing to pass third graders who hadn't scored on the third grade reading Big Standardiz
Community
I am just emerging from the final sprint of my seasonal fall marathon. I've been directing a community theater production of Disney's Little Mermaid, a show which may not have a great deal of intellectual heft, but which does include a great number of moving parts. The show ran for two weekends in our community theater, with the second weekend corresponding with our local festival. As one of the g

OCT 10

Why Are Teachers So Stressed?
Last week at the Atlantic, teacher-author Timothy Walker took a broad look at the reports of teacher stress (a good follow-up to his earlier piece on teacher burnout ). Walker did a good job of gathering up the current data on teacher stress, but he stopped short of one huge question. On twitter he opened the door to that question, so I'm going to go ahead and step through it. Walker's compendium
Don't Wait for the Authorities
This morning we had some professional development from our local police department, The training centered around the ALICE method of dealing with an active shooter. What are we supposed to do when there's an active killer in the building? ALICE focuses on three choices-- run, hide or fight. There were some specifics mixed, including some of the specifics of blockading a classroom door and making t

OCT 09

ICYMI: More Edureading
I It's a short list this week, but still worth reading. The Annual Autopsy You know I love a good analogy. Here's one more way to look at the uselessness of "data." Education's Failure To Retain Great Teachers Another look at the sad state of teacher retention in the ed biz. Seven Things I learned from Attending a Charter School Board Meeting Nancy Flanagan went to a charter board meeting and had


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